The Music Hidden in the Attic

In 1685, a boy was born in Halle, Germany, to a barber-surgeon who had already planned his son's future. Georg Handel would study law. There would be no music in this house. The father forbade it outright. But young George Frideric Handel could not stop the melodies that filled his mind unbidden, the harmonies he heard in church that lodged themselves somewhere deep in his bones.…