Most music lovers have encountered Georg Friedrich Händel (1685 – 1759) through holiday-time renditions of the Messiah's "Hallelujah" chorus. And many of them know and love that oratorio on Christ's life, death, and resurrection, as well as a few other greatest hits like the orchestral Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music, and perhaps Judas Maccabeus or one of the other English oratorios. Yet his operas, for which he was widely known in his own time, are the province mainly of specialists in Baroque music, and the events of his life, even though they reflected some of the most important musical issues of the day, have never become as familiar as the careers of Bach or Mozart. Perhaps the single word that best describes his life and music is "cosmopolitan": he was a German composer, trained in Italy, who spent most of his life in England.

Handel published his first volume of Suites for keyboard in London in 1720. The works had already been published without his permission in Amsterdam the previous year and Handel published them himself in London to protect his royalties. Also called Suites de pieces pour le Clavecin, the suites most often are sets of stylized dances. The Suite in F major, however, is not a set of dances, but rather a stylized church sonata in four movements: Adagio, Allegro, Adagio, and Fuga. The opening Adagio is a thoughtful and expansive movement with an exquisitely embellished melody above wide-ranging modulations starting in F major, but ending in A minor. The following Allegro is a rapid, racing movement in F major with few modulations. The following Adagio is a dramatic movement in D minor with a highly expressive melody above widely spaced chords. The closing Fuga Allegro is in four independent voices with an aggressive subject.

Source: AllMusic (https://www.allmusic.com/composition/suite-for-keyboar d-suite-de-piece-vol1-no2-in-f-major-hwv-427-mc00024055 33).

Although originally written for Keyboard, I created this Arrangement of the Allegro from the Suite in F Major (HWV 427 No. 2 Mvt. 4) for String Quartet (2 Violins, Viola & Cello).