Handel (Master Musicians) - Hardcover

Burrows, Donald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019816470X ISBN 13: 9780198164708

Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr, 1995

Synopsis

Celebrating its 100th anniversary, this extraordinary series continues to amaze and captivate its readers with detailed insight into the lives and work of music's geniuses. Unlike other composer biographies that focus narrowly on the music, this series explores the personal history of each composer and the social context surrounding the music. In a precise, engaging, and authoritative manner, each volume combines a vivid portrait of the master musicians' inspirations, influences, life experiences, even their weaknesses, with an accessible discussion of their work-all in roughly 300 pages. Further, each volume offers superb reference material, including a detailed life and times chronology, a complete list of works, a personalia glossary highlighting the important people in the composer's life, and a select bibliography. Under the supervision of music expert and series general editor Stanley Sadie, Master Musicians will certainly proceed to delight music scholars, serious musicians, and all music lovers for another hundred years.In this volume, Donald Burrows's relates Handel's life and his music, devoting particular attention to two crucial junctures in Handel's his transition from a church-trained musician in Germany to a successful opera composer in London, and the gradual transformation of his theater career from opera to oratorio, some thirty years later. In the oratorio form, as Burrows demonstrates, Handel was able to combine the techniques of large-scale construction and of aria writing that he had developed in his operas with an experience of choral music that went back to his earliest training as a church organist. The result was music that succeeds to this day in capturing the imagination of a vast audience.

About this title

About the Author

Donald Burrows is a leading authority on the life and music of George Frideric Handel. His book Handel and the English Chapel Royal has been recognised as the first full-scale study of Handel's English church music. His published editions of Handel's music include the oratorios Messiah, Samson, and Belshazzar; the operas Imeneo and Ariodante; the complete violin sonatas; and the suite for two harpsichords.

Review

"Can also serve as a reference tool for Handel and his works...Libraries with the earlier edition of this book would do well to replace it with this current edition." --Choice

"Burrows makes a valuable contribution towards restoring the balance...Burrows skillfully interweaves Handel's 'outward' biography with the 'inner' one of his creative life, linking the two aspects chronologically in irregularly alternating chapters. In this way the reader can conveniently use the book either as biography or as a commentary on the music...this is a considerable achievement. Burrows's study of Handel...provides us with a deeply informative and well-balanced composition."--BBC Music

"A welcome addition to what has already proved itself to be an excellent, authoritative series of musical biographies"--Classical Music

"This book, of Handelian solidity, is worth of its subject,...The Clarendon Press, as usual, have responded to a worthy book worthily; production, print, and musical calligraphy are exemplary, and the scholarly apparatus and appendices aare exhaustive but not exhausting."--The Oldie

"A properly balanced book, with due weight given to previously-neglected areas. It is particularly good to see Handel's English church music being given more attention. There is an immense amount of scholarship here, presented throughout the book in an accessible way ... an elegantly-produced hardback, it is outstandingly good value."--Peter Holman, The Musical Times

UNEDITED UK REVIEW: "Although precious few certain facts are known about Handel's pre-London career, this latest biography details them all in over 40 pages of well-reasoned narrative."--Classical Music

"...the best single-volume book on Handel...£25.00 is very good value for a work of this size, let alone excellence: it augers well for the new management."--Early Music review

"Not just a 'better' book, it is the best single-volume book on Handel ... The author has all the facts at his finger-tips, quotes extensively from the sources ... and makes sensible remarks on the music. There is a vast knowledge lying behind the book."--Clifford Bartlett, Early Music Review

"Mr. Burrows writes like a specialist ...exudes authority not only in what he puts forward but also in his prudent refusal to claim too much...[this book] will undoubtedly prove invaluable to serious students and useful as well to general readers."--The New York Times

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019816470X
• ISBN 13: 9780198164708
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 503