Handel at Cannons

Cannons was a large house in Middlesex, the seat of James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos who was a patron of Handel.

It has been suggested that the move to Cannons was related to the fact that in 1717 there was reduced demand for his services in central London because operatic productions were experiencing a temporary downturn.

At the end of Handel's stay at Cannons, the Duke and his friends helped him establish a new opera company in London, the so-called Royal Academy of Music.

[11] The libretto, based on a tragedy by Jean Racine, was by John Arbuthnot and Alexander Pope, and according to Winton Dean [citation needed] appears to have been given in a semi-staged version although this is not definitively proven in any known document.

Appropriately for Cannons, which had expensive water features, the pastoral hero Acis is transformed into a fountain at the end.

Dating the music is difficult because it was written over a period of years and the composer had been happy to leave it in manuscript until he got wind of a forthcoming unauthorised publication.