Handel and the Slave Trade with David Hunter

In 2013, the music librarian David Hunter found the name George Frideric Handel in a printed list of investors in one of Britain's official slave trading companies. Since then, Dr. Hunter has researched Handel and his patrons' investments in the slave trade, as well as the broader relationship between slavery and the history of classical music. What does it mean that profits from the brutality and horror of the Middle Passage benefitted the career of the composer who wrote the "Messiah"? And ...