Handel in London

Author: Jane Glover
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681779471
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 391

Book Description
In 1712, a young German composer followed his princely master to London and would remain there for the rest of his life. That master would become King George II and the composer was George Freidrich Handel. Handel, then still only twenty-seven and largely self-taught, would be at the heart of music activity in London for the next four decades, composing masterpiece after masterpiece, whether the glorious coronation anthem, Zadok the Priest, operas such as Rinaldo and Alcina or the great oratorios, culminating, of course, in Messiah. Here, Jane Glover, who has conducted Handel’s work in opera houses and concert halls throughout the world, draws on her profound understanding of music and musicians to tell Handel’s story. It is a story of music-making and musicianship, but also of courts and cabals of theatrical rivalries and of eighteenth-century society. It is also, of course the story of some of the most remarkable music ever written, music that has been played and sung, and loved, in this country—and throughout the world—for three hundred years.

Dance in Handel's London Operas

Author: Sarah Yuill McCleave
Publisher: University Rochester Press
ISBN: 1580464203
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
Examines the pivotal role of dance in the Italian operas of Handel, perhaps the greatest opera composer between Monteverdi and Mozart. George Frideric Handel set himself apart from his contemporaries by employing choreographed instrumental music to complement and reinforce the emotional impact of his operas. Of his fifty-three operas, no fewer than fourteen -- including ten written for the London stage -- feature dances. Dance in Handel's London Operas explores the relationship between music, drama, and dance in these London works, dispelling the notion that dance was a largely peripheral element in Italian-language operas prior to those of Gluck. Taking a chronological approach, Sarah McCleave examines operas written throughout various periods in Handel's life, beginning with his early London operas, including his time at the Royal Music Academy and the "Sallé" operas of the 1730s, and concluding with his unstaged dramatic opera Alceste (1750). In considering the various influences on Handel (particularly the London stage), McCleave blends analysis of information from eighteenth-century treatises with that found in more modern studies, offering an informed and imaginative understanding of the role dance played in the work of this major figure --one who remained responsive throughout his career to the vital and innovative theatrical environment in which he worked. Sarah McCleave is a lecturer at The School of Creative Arts at Queen's University Belfast.

George Frideric Handel

Author: Paul Henry Lang
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486144593
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 794

Book Description
Exceptionally full, detailed study of the man, his music and times. Childhood, music training, years in London; analysis of Messiah and other works; much more. Introduction. Includes 35 illustrations.

George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends

Author: Ellen T. Harris
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393245896
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
During his lifetime, the sounds of Handel’s music reached from court to theater, echoed in cathedrals, and filled crowded taverns, but the man himself—known to most as the composer of Messiah—is a bit of a mystery. Though he took meticulous care of his musical manuscripts and even provided for their preservation on his death, very little of an intimate nature survives. One document—Handel’s will—offers us a narrow window into his personal life. In it, he remembers not only family and close colleagues but also neighborhood friends. In search of the private man behind the public figure, Ellen T. Harris has spent years tracking down the letters, diaries, personal accounts, legal cases, and other documents connected to these bequests. The result is a tightly woven tapestry of London in the first half of the eighteenth century, one that interlaces vibrant descriptions of Handel’s music with stories of loyalty, cunning, and betrayal. With this wholly new approach, Harris has achieved something greater than biography. Layering the interconnecting stories of Handel’s friends like the subjects and countersubjects of a fugue, Harris introduces us to an ambitious, shrewd, generous, brilliant, and flawed man, hiding in full view behind his public persona.

Handel

Author: Jonathan Keates
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1407020838
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 458

Book Description
Jonathan Keates original biography of Handel was hailed as a masterpiece on its publication in 1985. This fully revised and updated new edition - published to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the composers death - charts in detail Handel's life, from his youth in Germany, through his brilliantly successful Italian sojourn, to the opulence and squalor of Georgian London where he made his permanent home. For over two decades Handel was absorbed in London's heady but precarious operatic world. But even his phenomenal energy and determination could not overcome the public's growing indifference to Italian opera in the 1730s, and he turned finally to oratorio, a genre which he made peculiarly his own and in which he created some of his finest works, such as Saul, Messiah, Belshazzar and Jephtha. Over the last two decades a complete revolution in Handel's status has taken place. He is now seen both as a titanic figure in music, whose compositions have found a permanent place in the international repertoire, and as one of the world's favourite composers, with snatches of his work accompanying weddings, funerals and television commercials the world over. Skillfully interwoven with the account of Handel's life are commentaries on all his major works, as well as many less familiar pieces by this most inventive, expressive and captivating of composers. Handel was an extraordinary genius whose career abounded in reversals that would have crushed anyone with less resilience and will power, and Jonathan Keates writes about his life and work with sympathy and scrutiny.

Music in the London Theatre from Purcell to Handel

Author: Colin Timms
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107154642
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Book Description
This book discusses literary and dramatic aspects of musical works for voices and instruments performed in English theatres (c.1650 and 1750).

Mozart's Women

Author: Jane Glover
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 0330470507
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
Mozart was fascinated, amused, aroused, hurt, and betrayed by women. He loved and respected them, composed for them, performed with them. This unique biography looks at his interaction with each, starting with his family (his mother, Maria Anna and beloved and talented sister, Nannerl), and his marriage (which brought his 'other family', the Weber sisters). His relationships with his artists are examined, in particular those of his operas, through whose characters Mozart gave voice to the emotions of women who were, like his entire female acquaintance, restrained by the conventions and structures of eighteenth-century society. This is their story as well as his -- and shows once again that a great part of the composer’s genius was in his understanding and musical expression of human nature. Evocative and beautifully written, Mozart’s Women illuminates the music, the man, and above all the women who inspired him. 'Jane Glover has pulled off a coup des livres with her fresh take on Mozart's life and work’ Sunday Telegraph ‘Readable, informative and moving...Her passion for the music shines through this touching, vividly told story' Sunday Times

G. F. Handel

Author: Mary Ann Parker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136783598
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
Baroque composer George Frideric Handel easily ranks among the world's greatest composers. The first edition of this research guide on Handel appeared in 1988; since that time a great deal of scholarly work has been published on Handel and related areas, including the discovery of a hitherto unknown work. New general resources such as the New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992), electronic resources such as the RISM libretto catalogue online, and the study of Handel's continuing popularity as evidenced by the new Handel House Museum in London and Handel practice around the world (e.g., Messiah and millennium celebrations in Tonga, singalong Messiahs etc.) are incorporated into this revised edition of the Handel guide.

Handel as Orpheus

Author: Ellen T. Harris
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674015982
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 452

Book Description
Handel wrote over 100 cantatas, compositions for voice and instruments decsribing the joy and pain of love. In the first comprehensive study of the cantatas, Harris investigates their place in Handel's life as well as their extraordinary beauty.

Handel

Author: Christopher Hogwood
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Book Description
Handel remains one of the unchallenged geniuses of musical history.Yet many revealing and fascinating aspects of his work have been obscured by generations of adulation, prejudice or misinterpretation. Christopher Hogwood takes us back to the original Handel, blending the evidence from documents of all kinds with judicious biographical observations - and with a diverting array of illustrations. The result is a comprehensive and entertaining portrait of the developing character and career of Handel, with an important concluding chapter that traces the progress of the Handel legend down to our own time.