<P> With respect to instruction in composition, in addition to having Handel apply himself to traditional fugue and cantus firmus work, Zachow, recognizing Handel's precocious talents, systematically introduced Handel to the variety of styles and masterworks contained in his extensive library . He did this by requiring Handel to copy selected scores . "I used to write like the devil in those days", Handel recalled much later . Much of this copying was entered into a notebook that Handel maintained for the rest of his life . Although it has since disappeared, the notebook has been sufficiently described to understand what pieces Zachow wished Handel to study . Among the chief composers represented in this exercise book were Johann Krieger, an "old master" in the fugue and prominent organ composer, Johann Caspar Kerll, a representative of the "southern style" after his teacher Frescobaldi and imitated later by Handel, Johann Jakob Froberger, an "internationalist" also closely studied by Buxtehude and Bach, and Georg Muffat, whose amalgam of French and Italian styles and his synthesis of musical forms influenced Handel . </P> <P> Mainwaring writes that during this time Zachow had begun to have Handel assume some of his church duties . Zachow, Mainwaring asserts, was "often" absent, "from his love of company, and a chearful glass," and Handel therefore performed on organ frequently . What is more, according to Mainwaring, Handel began composing, at the age of nine, church services for voice and instruments "and from that time actually did compose a service every week for three years successively ." Mainwaring ends this chapter of Handel's life by concluding that three or four years had been enough to allow Handel to surpass Zachow, and Handel had become "impatient for another situation"; "Berlin was the place agreed upon ." Carelessness with dates or sequences (and possibly imaginative interpretation by Mainwaring) makes this period confused . </P> <P> Handel's father died on 11 February 1697 . It was German custom for friends and family to compose funeral odes for a substantial burgher like Georg, and young Handel discharged his duty with a poem dated 18 February and signed with his name and (in deference to his father's wishes) "dedicated to the liberal arts ." At the time Handel was studying either at Halle's Lutheran Gymnasium or the Latin School . </P> <P> Mainwaring has Handel traveling to Berlin the next year, 1698 . The problem with Mainwaring as an authority for this date, however, is that he tells of how Handel's father communicated with the "king" during Handel's stay, declining the Court's offer to send Handel to Italy on a stipend and that his father died "after his return from Berlin ." But since Georg Händel died in 1697, either the date of the trip or Mainwaring's statements about Handel's father must be in error . Early biographers solved the problem by making the year of the trip 1696, then noting that at the age of 11 Handel would need a guardian, have Handel's father or friend of the family accompany him, all the while puzzling over why the elder Handel, who wanted Handel to become a lawyer, would spend the sum to lead his son further into the temptation of music as a career . Schoelcher for example has Handel traveling to Berlin at 11, meeting both Bononcini and Attilio Ariosti in Berlin and then returning at the direction of his father . But Ariosti was not in Berlin before the death of Handel's father . and Handel could not have met Bononcini in Berlin before 1702 . Modern biographers either accept the year as 1698, since most reliable older authorities agree with it, and discount what Mainwaring says about what took place during the trip or assume that Mainwaring conflated two or more visits to Berlin, as he did with Handel's later trips to Venice . </P>

Which two famous composers from the baroque period were still successful during the pre classical