George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel was a German-born composer, keyboard player, violinist, and musical entrepreneur who became a central figure in eighteenth-century British musical life. Born in Halle in 1685, he studied with Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, worked at the Hamburg opera, traveled in Italy, and settled permanently in London in 1712. He became a British subject in 1727 and wrote extensively for the stage, the court, charitable institutions, and the concert hall. His works include operas such as Giulio Cesare and Siroe, royal and church music such as Zadok the Priest, orchestral works, and English oratorios including Messiah.

Handel did not compose a hymn tune specifically for Philip Doddridge's text. The melody now called CHRISTMAS derives from material in the soprano aria Non vi piacque, ingiusti Dei in Handel's opera Siroe, first performed in 1728. Samuel Arnold adapted portions of that aria as a hymn tune in 1791, decades after both Handel's opera and Doddridge's death. Later editors further transmitted and reshaped the tune, and some hymnals credit Lowell Mason with an 1821 arrangement. Handel is therefore the source composer of the melodic material rather than the original arranger of the congregational tune.