Who composed the Messiah oratorio, with its Hallelujah chorus?

Handel, who wrote it in about three weeks in 1741 - 259 pages of manuscript, working almost without leaving the house. He was German by birth, Italian by training and English by naturalisation, and had spent years going bankrupt on Italian opera before switching to English oratorio, which needed no scenery, no costumes and no expensive Italian singers.

It premiered in Dublin rather than London, as a charity performance for a hospital, a debtors' prison and an infirmary - and it has raised money for charity continuously ever since. Ladies were asked not to wear hoops and gentlemen to leave their swords at home so more people could fit in the hall.

The tradition of standing for the Hallelujah chorus is supposed to have begun with George II rising to his feet, and there is no contemporary evidence he was ever at a performance. Handel went blind in his last years and continued to perform organ concertos from memory. He is buried in Westminster Abbey, and Beethoven - who thought him the greatest composer who ever lived - said that he would uncover his head and kneel at his grave.