The Letters And Writings Of George Frideric Handel

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.

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.

"The historical record has given us very few real letters written by or to the composer George Frideric Handel. The Handel Letters seeks to amend this oversight, though admittedly n the realm of ficiton. This work presents an ethnographic research perspective, a fictional set of characters, and some meaningful encounters as a focus group meets to examine some putative letters written to Handel. Wealthy American mining widow, Forella Wainwright, has her own unusual reason for seeking out any previously unknown information on the life of Handel. Her query in a London newspaper unearths a packet of letters written to Handel over the course of nearly fifty years. She brings together a seminar of ten people who meet over many months to discuss the letters and consider what lessons these missives and some digging into biographies and videos about Handel may hold for them and others living in the twenty-first century. The seminar becomes a collective review of Handel's music, his times, and a number of social and philosophical issues still trailing from Handel's full yet enigmatic life."--Back cover.

From Handel's renowned biographer, the story of one of the most celebrated compositions of Western classical music, Handel's famous oratorio, Messiah In the late summer of 1741, George Friderick Handel, composed an oratorio set to words from the King James Bible, rich in tuneful arias and magnificent choruses. Jonathan Keates recounts the history and afterlife of Messiah, one of the best-loved works in the classical repertoire. He relates the composition's first performances and its relationship with spirituality in the age of the Enlightenment, and examines how Messiah, after Handel's death, became an essential component of our musical canon. An authoritative and affectionate celebration of the high-point of the Georgian golden age of music, Messiah is essential reading for lovers of classical music.