Every Valley
The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel's Messiah
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • From the bestselling historian and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, the moving untold story of the eighteenth-century men and women behind the making of Handel’s Messiah.
"A delicious history of music, power, love, genius, royalty and adventure."—Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The World
"A book of power and glory, brimming with emotion and dazzling in its reach."—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra and The Revolutionary
George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is arguably the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. Adored by millions, it is performed each year by renowned choirs and orchestras, as well as by audiences singing along with the words on their cell phones.
But this work of triumphant joy was born in a worried age. Britain in the early Enlightenment was a place of astonishing creativity but also the seat of an empire mired in war, enslavement, and conflicts over everything from the legitimacy of government to the meaning of truth. Against this turbulent background, prize-winning author Charles King has crafted a cinematic drama of the troubled lives that shaped a masterpiece of hope.
Every Valley presents a depressive dissenter stirred to action by an ancient prophecy; an actress plagued by an abusive husband and public scorn; an Atlantic sea captain and penniless philanthropist; and an African Muslim man held captive in the American colonies and hatching a dangerous plan for getting back home. At center stage is Handel himself, composer to kings but, at midlife, in ill health and straining to keep an audience’s attention. Set amid royal intrigue, theater scandals, and political conspiracy, Every Valley is entertaining, inspiring, unforgettable.
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The beloved Christmastime oratorio, with its sublime "Hallelujah Chorus," was the cry of a wretched world yearning for enlightenment, according to this scattershot study. King (Gods of the Upper Air), a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, recaps the career of Georg Frideric Handel (1685–1759), the German-born musician who became Britain's court composer and wrote the music for the Messiah in 1741. Though Handel enjoyed acclaim, his masterpiece was built by "a time, place, and... individuals" enmeshed in the oratorio's themes of suffering, justice, and redemption, King posits. Among those profiled are Susannah Cibber, a lead singer at Messiah's premiere, whose love affair with an aristocrat led to a scandalous court case; Charles Jennens, the author of the oratorio's biblical libretto; and Ayuba Diallo, an African man who was kidnapped, sold into bondage, and rescued by Englishmen. Though Diallo had no direct connection to Messiah, his story casts a light on how slavery underpinned artistic organizations such as the Royal Academy of Music (Handel's employer), many of whose investors had stock in slave trading companies. Unfortunately, King doesn't always convincingly connect his character sketches back to the oratorio, which makes his central insight ("It took a universe of pain to make a musical monument to hope") feel somewhat forced. Despite the intriguing historical trivia, this doesn't quite hang together.
