The town of Halle occupied a singular political situation. It belonged originally to the Elector of Saxony; by the Treaties of Westphalia it was ceded to the Elector of Brandenburg; but it paid tribute to the Duke Augustus of Saxony during his lifetime. After the death of Augustus in 1680, Halle passed definitely to Brandenburg; and in 1681 the Grand Elector came to receive homage there. Handel then was born a Prussian; but his father was in the service of the Duke of Saxony, and he retained relationship with the son of Augustus, Johann Adolf, who moved his court after the Prussian annexation to the neighbouring town of Weissenfels. Thus the childhood of Handel was influenced by two intellectual forces: the Saxon and the Prussian. Of the two the more aristocratic, and also the more powerful was the Saxon. Most of the artists had emigrated with the Duke to Weissenfels. It was there that the genial Heinrich Schütz was born and died:[4] it was there that Handel found his first impetus, and where the calling of the child was first recognized. The precocious musical tendencies of the little George Frederick were somewhat curbed by the formal opposition of his father.[5] The sturdy surgeon had more than objection--he possessed an aversion to the profession of artist. This sentiment was shared by nearly all the sturdy men of Germany. The calling of musician was degraded by the unedifying spectacle of many artists in the years of relaxation which followed the Thirty Years' war.[6] Besides which, the _bourgeois_ German of the seventeenth century had a very different idea of music from that of our French middle classes of the nineteenth century. It was with them a mere art of amusement, and not a serious profession. Many of the masters of that time, Schütz, Rosenmüller, Kuhnau, were lawyers, or theologians, before they devoted themselves to music; or they even followed for a time the two professions. Handel's father wished his son to follow his own profession, that of law; but a journey to Weissenfels overcame all his objections. The Duke heard the little seven-year-old Handel play the organ, with the result that he sent for the father to see him and recommended him not to thwart the child's obvious musical talents. The father, who had always taken these counsels very badly when they came from anyone else, doubtless appreciated them when they came from the lips of a prince; and without renouncing his own right over his son (for he still had the legal plan in his head) consented to let him learn music; and on his return to Halle he placed him under the best master in the town, the organist Friedrich Wilhelm Zachau.[7] * * * * *