COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
The Handel Hendrix House on Brook Street in Mayfair (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
Patrick Comerford
Who are the inseparable pairs in your mind? Morecambe and Wise? Laurel and Hardy? The Two Ronnies? French and Saunders? Simon and Garfunkel? Lennon and McCartney? Flanders and Swann?
Without prompting, would you have suggested Handel and Hendrix?
Handel Hendrix House (previously Handel & Hendrix in London and the Handel House Museum) is a London museum dedicated to the lives and works of the German-born baroque composer George Frideric Handel and the American rock singer-guitarist Jimi Hendrix. They lived lived next door to each other at 25 and 23 Brook Street, Mayfair, separated only by walls and a mere 2½ centuries or so.
I was writing the week before last about blue plaques (5 September 2026), and this unlikely pairing of composers are commemorated with blue plaques on the façades of the neighbouring houses that now form Handel Hendrix House, previously known as Handel & Hendrix in London and the Handel House Museum.
Handel made his home in London in 1712 and eventually became a British citizen in 1727. He lived at 25 Brook Street from 1723 until he died there in 1759. Almost all his works after 1723, including many of his operas, oratorios and ceremonial music, were composed and partially rehearsed in the house, where he had a variety of keyboard instruments, including harpsichords, a clavichord and a small chamber organ.
Handel moved into 25 Brook Street in 1723, shortly after he had been appointed by George II as composer to the Chapel Royal. The house had been newly built with Nos 23, 27/29 and 31 by George Barnes as part of the planned extension of Brook Street, linking Hanover Square with Grosvenor Square, between 1717 and 1726.
Handel’s immediate neighbours on either side were from the upper middle classes and initially included the MP John Monckton, who later became the first Viscount Galway in 1727.
From the 1730s on, there are references to rehearsals of operas and oratorios at Brook Street by Handel’s friends and fellow musicians. Handel used the house for entertainment, composition and rehearsal, and for business.
After Handel died in 1759, his musical instruments passed to John Christopher Smith and his son of the same name, while the tenancy of the house and Handel’s clothing passed to his servant John Du Burk. The house remained largely unchanged until 1905, when CJ Charles converted the house into a shop, removing the original façade and the internal dividing walls. It was bought by the Co-operative Insurance Society in 1971.
Although the house is a Grade I listed building, its survival was threatened when planning permission was sought in 1982 to demolish five Grade II listed buildings, including Handel’s house.
The Handel Museum Trust Fund was formed in the early 1990s with the object of creating a Handel museum at 25 Brook Street, and after a long period of negotiations and extensive renovation work, 25 Brook Street opened as the Handel House Museum 25 years ago on 8 November 2001.
The house has been restored to look as it did when Handel lived there for 36 years from 1723 to 1759. It is a typical early 18th-century London terrace house, with a basement, three main storeys and an attic, and Handel was the first resident. The interiors have been restored to the somewhat spartan style of the Georgian era, using mostly architectural elements from elsewhere, since, apart from the staircase, few of the original interior features survived.
The museum has restored period rooms on the first and second floors of 25 Brook Street and exhibition rooms in No 23, the adjacent house on the terrace. In 2016, the museum expanded to incorporate the upper floors of 23 Brook Street, home of Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s.
The Handel House Collection Trust has a collection of Handel memorabilia, including the Byrne Collection of several hundred items that were acquired in 1998.
The museum incorporates the upper floors of its neighbour at 23 Brook Street, the home of the American rock singer-guitarist Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) in 1968-1969. These rooms were used for temporary exhibitions and events, but after fundraising, these and the rest of the rooms from the Hendrix apartment were opened to the public in February 2016 as ‘Handel and Hendrix in London’. One exhibit is a collection of Hendrix’s old records.
Both houses have blue plaques for their respective occupants. The blue plaque to George Frideric Handel at 25 Brook Street reads: ‘George Frideric Handel 1685-1759 Composer lived in this house from 1723 and died here’. The blue plaque to Jimi Hendrix at 23 Brook Street reads: ‘Jimi Hendrix 1942-1970 Guitarist and Songwriter lived here 1968-1969’.
The house is open to the public five days a week, Wednesday to Sunday. The museum has a lively events programme including live music, changing exhibitions, lectures and children’s educational events. Several performances of Baroque music are staged each month.
Romeo and Juliet? Burton and Taylor? Plato and Socrates? Mutt and Jeff? Tom and Jerry? Holmes and Watson? Watson and Crick? Mapp and Lucia?
But Handel and Hendrix? Well, that was a first for me in Mayfair this summer.
There are blue plaques to George Frideric Handel on the façade of 25 Brook Street and to Jimi Hendrix at 23 Brook Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)
‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’ (Luke 7: 31-32) … traditional Greek folk music celebrated at a restaurant in the old town in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XV, 13 September 2026).
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (16 September) remembers Saint Ninian (ca 432), Bishop of Galloway and Apostle of the Picts, and Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), Priest and Tractarian.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’ (Luke 7: 32) … ‘Τα κάλαντα’ (‘Carols’), Νικηφόρος Λύτρας (Nikiphoros Lytras)
Luke 7: 31-35 (NRSVA)
[Jesus said:] 31 ‘To what then will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? 32 They are like children sitting in the market-place and calling to one another,
“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not weep.”
33 ‘For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, “He has a demon”; 34 the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” 35 Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.’
Imagine going to a wedding but not getting onto the floor and dancing (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Reflections:
When we were looking at the Gospel reading yesterday, which told the story of the widow of Nain grieving her son at his funeral, I said how funeral stories and the stories of children being raised to life are not always the most cheerful Bible readings, and I recalled how that reading was particularly difficult when I was preaching one Sunday morning when I was baptising a little baby boy.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus compares ‘the people of this generation’ with children sitting in the market-place calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep’ (Luke 7: 31-32).
I have often stayed up late at weddings, at the receptions after funerals, and enjoying late night sporting events, especially rugby and football. Each time, in ways that were appropriate to each occasion, I have entered into the spirit of the event, and where possible, moved from being a mere spectator to being a full participant.
When we go to weddings and funerals … and as a priest I got my fair share of both … when we go to weddings and funerals, the attitude we go with makes a world of difference: do I go as a spectator or do I go as a participant?
Imagine going to a funeral and failing to offer sympathy to those who are grieving and mourning.
Shortly after my ordination, I was asked to officiate at my first wedding. Initially, I declined the invitation to go to the reception afterwards, until someone chided me gently and asked me: are you at this wedding as a spectator or as a participant?
Perhaps, as a new curate, I was too worried about sending out the wrong signals. If I stood back, would I be reproached for not eating and drinking with the people I was there to serve (see Luke 7: 33)? If I went, would I be seen as being there only for eating and drinking (verse 34)?
But it was never about me, surely; it was only ever about the couple getting married.
A student in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute was telling me once about her parish placement as an ordinand. Initially, she was uncomfortable with the style of worship and the theological emphasis of the parish she was placed in. But the parish reacted to her warmly and gently. And as the weeks rolled by she realised she had moved from being an observer on Sunday mornings, to being an engaged visitor, to being a participant.
When we join in waves and chants at a football match, join in the dance at weddings, sing the hymns and enter into the prayers at another church, cry and hug those who are grieving and mourning at a funeral, we move from being observers and spectators to being participants. And the great opportunity for this transformation is provided Sunday after Sunday, not at the Liturgy but in the Liturgy.
If you have been to the Middle East, or have just seen Fiddler on the Roof, you know that dancing at Jewish weddings was traditionally a male celebration. I have seen at funerals in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean that the open mourning and weeping is usually expressed on behalf of the community by women in particular.
Indeed, we know since classical times how a man’s worth in life was once counted by the number of women crying at his funeral.
These traditions were passed on through the generations by children watching learning from adults and by children in turn teaching one other.
In today’s Gospel reading (Luke 7: 31-35), we see how Christ has noticed this in the streets and the back alleys as he moves through the towns and cities, probably in Galilee and along the Mediterranean shore.
He sees the children playing, the boys playing wedding dances, and the girls playing funeral wailing and mourning.
He notices the ways in which children can reproach each other for not joining in their playfulness:
We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn. (verse 32)
Even as he speaks there is playfulness in the way Jesus phrases his observation poetically. There is humour in the way he uses Greek words that rhyme for dance and mourn at the end of each line of the children’s taunts:
Perhaps he was repeating an everyday rebuke in Greek at the time for people who stand back from what others are doing. We might put poetic rhyme on his lips here:
A wedding song we played for you,
The dance you did but scorn.
A woeful dirge we chanted too,
But then you would not mourn.
The boys playing tin whistles and beating tin drums are learning to become adult men. The girls wailing and beating their breasts in mock weeping are learning to become adult women. Each group is growing into the roles and rituals that will be expected of them when they mature.
Like all good children’s games, the point is the game, not who wins.
The games we played as children may now seem silly and pointless. But when we were children they mattered as a communal and community experience. The fun was not because there was anything to win. The fun was in taking part. And in taking part we were helped in the process of growing and maturing and making the transition from childhood to adolescence, and from adolescence to adulthood.
To and fro, back and forth, these boys and girls in the market place play the games of weddings and funerals.
The music they play shifts and changes its tones and tunes. This endless, pointless, repetition is their inherited way of learning and socialising. Their playfulness ensures their tradition and culture is reinforced and is handed on to the next generation.
But if the boys make music and the girls do not dance, if the girls wail, and the boys do not weep, how can they have a shared story, a shared adulthood, a shared culture, a shared future, a shared humanity?
When we refuse to take part in the game, in the ritual, we refuse to take part in the shaping of society, we are denying our shared culture. When I try exclude others from the taking part in the game, in the ritual, I am refusing them their role rightful in shaping society.
When reciprocity collapses, we are denying our shared humanity.
We can become paralysed by our inability to enter into the game of others. And then the game turns from song and dance to what we might call ‘the blame game.’
It is so easy when I withdraw from the social activities of others to blame them.
Yes, there is a time for dancing and a time for mourning: each has its proper place, and they flow into each other, like the children’s game when it is working. But when vanity gets in the way, there is a breakdown in our understanding of time and of humanity.
If I stand back detached, and remain a mere observer of the joys and sorrows in the lives of others, I am not sharing in their humanity.
And in not sharing in your humanity, I am failing to acknowledge that you too are made in the image and likeness of God.
But when we rejoice with people in their joys, and when we mourn with people in their sorrows, we are putting into practice what the doctrine of the Trinity teaches us about us being not only made in the image and likeness of God individually but communally and collectively too as humanity.
The ‘Bottle Dance’ at the wedding in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 16 September 2026):
The theme this week (13 -19 September 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Witness as With-ness’ (pp 38-39). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection by the Revd Canon Dr Peniel Rajkumar, Director of Global Mission and Theologian, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 16 September 2026) invites us to pray:
Merciful God, when I am tempted to complain, remind me of the suffering you bore. Form in me a heart that listens before it speaks.
The Collect:
Almighty and everlasting God,
who called your servant Ninian to preach the gospel
to the people of northern Britain:
raise up in this and every land
heralds and evangelists of your kingdom,
that your Church may make known the immeasurable riches
of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
Almighty and everlasting God,
who called your servant Ninian to preach the gospel
to the people of northern Britain:
raise up in this and every land
heralds and evangelists of your kingdom,
that your Church may make known the immeasurable riches
of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’ (Luke 7: 31-32) … music at the Hiroshima Day commemorations at the Peace Pagoda in Milton Keynes (Patrick Comerford, 2026)
