At the age of eleven Pieter was appointed as an organist of the church of St Nicolas in Utrecht. Five years later his family moved to Amsterdam where he studied with Tartini. By 1743 he was playing the violin in public performances and earned the right to publish music by 1744. For a short time Hellendaal was a student at the Universiry in Leiden and even made appearances at The Hague. By 1751 he had left for London where he was afforded ample opportunites to perfrom and compose. In the performance of Handel's "Acis and Galatea" Hellendaal performed solo music between acts. The composition "Glory be to the Father" (a canon) received an annual award from The Gentlemen's Catch Club and contemporaneously the his six sonatas for violin and continuo were published. The characteristics of Hellendaal's music included typical conventions of Italian Baroque music. He assiduously followed the practive of thoroughbass with single thematic devices. Violin sonatas followed the slow-fast-fast, three movement structures of Tartini and his concertos were dominated by fugues and liberation of the viola part. ~ Keith Johnson