The Rooms of 25 Brook Street
- Rehearsal and performance room (first floor, front). This was used as a rehearsal room by Handel from the 1730s onwards. It contains portraits of contemporary singers and a reproduction of a two manual harpsichord by the Flemish firm Ruckers. The harpsichord is used for concerts and is also available for rehearsals by musicians from the general public.
- Composition room (first floor, back). This is believed to be the room in which composed some of his most celebrated works, including Messiah. It contains portraits of Handel and Charles Jennens, Handel's friend and librettist of Messiah. This room usually contains a smaller harpsichord; while it is being repaired, a 1749 Joseph Mahoon spinet, similar to the spinet Handel is believed to have owned, is on display, on loan from a private collection.
- London room (second floor, back). This served as Handel's dressing room and was originally connected to a small closet.
- Bedroom (second floor, front). This is probably the room where Handel died. A complete inventory was made within months of his death. Amongst the furniture, it describes a large canopied tester bed similar to the one now in the room.
Read more about this topic: Handel House Museum
Famous quotes containing the words rooms, brook and/or street:
“By sitting dressed like this, in rooms like these,
Saying I can’t guess what just fancy, when
They could be really drinking, or in bed....”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“This sand seemed to us the connecting link between land and water. It was a kind of water on which you could walk, and you could see the ripple-marks on its surface, produced by the winds, precisely like those at the bottom of a brook or lake. We had read that Mussulmans are permitted by the Koran to perform their ablutions in sand when they cannot get water, a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now understand the propriety of this provision.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that’s what people observe. You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw. It’s just extraordinary that we should have been given these peculiarities.... Something is ironic in the world and it has to do with the fact that what you intend never comes out like you intend it.”
—Diane Arbus (1923–1971)