George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends
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- £17.99
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- £17.99
Publisher 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 1749, the 64-year-old George Frideric Handel enjoyed one of his most remarkable oratorio seasons, premiering Susanna, Solomon and staging revivals of Hercules, Samson, and Messiah. Despite of his fame, Handel's private life continues to remain a bit mysterious. Drawing heavily on Handel's letters, diaries, financial accounts, and wills of Handel's closest friends, music historian Harris pulls back the curtain on Handel's life, ambitions, and involvement in the political, religious, and charity life of early- and mid-18th-century London. As she points out, while Handel did not explicitly depict his friends in his musical works, they provide the best illustration of his listening public. For example, Rinaldo, which set in the Middle East, would not have seemed exotic to James Hunter, who worked with the British East India Company; the legal problems that afflicted the title character in Susanna also plagued Mary Delany and her husband. Handel composed much of his chamber music and keyboard music for private performances in homes, and his friend Lord Shaftesbury once remarked that in these settings "Handel was in high spirits and I think never played and sung so well." Although Harris often lapses into an academic voice ("as I stated earlier," "as has been described"), she nevertheless has written ay readable tale of one of the world's most enigmatic musicians and composers.
