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Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
Ellen T. Harris is professor emeritus at MIT and has served on the music faculties of Columbia University and the University of Chicago. Her previous books include Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas, and she has spoken at Lincoln Center and appeared on PBS NewsHour and BBC Radio 3. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* To fully appreciate the great composer of the universally known oratorio Messiah, it is not enough to trace his personal life, Harris says. The culture of the society he served and aspired to join must be considered, too. As she proceeds through Handel's life, Harris embeds him in the institutional realities of eighteenth-century England, where entrepreneurship predominated. London suited the young musician, who had set out to pursue as independent a career as possible a goal attainable, however, only by having the right friends. Handel was good at friendship, to the extent that his life and theirs six in particular, whom Harris chronicles as extensively as she does her main subject are inextricable. The composer followed their leads in business (his first opera company was structurally similar to the East India and other great trading companies); negotiated with them, by means of carefully ambiguous roman a clef scenarios for his operas, the politics of a kingdom with a contested throne and, by similar means in his oratorios, the religious contention of the day; sympathized with them about loveless, arranged marriages (well he might, since he was socially ineligible to marry at all) via many an opera's plot; and privately entertained and taught them music with his instrumental works. Handel's life in Harris' hands becomes a compelling plunge into the social history of his time.--Olson, Ray Copyright 2010 Booklist
Choice Review
This insightful, engaging, beautifully written book explores the intertwining lives of George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)--indisputably one of the greatest composers of the 18th century--and his closest friends and colleagues in England. The narrative unfolds in roughly chronological order, and within individual chapters, Harris (emer., MIT) explores specific cultural or contextual themes in depth, in so doing providing rich insight into the lives and experiences of Handel and his circle. As she investigates music in the home, marriage and social status, law and friendship, collecting, religion, and sickness, death, and legacies, the author masterfully weaves together details of the biographies of the composer and his friends drawn from the extensive letters, diaries, personal accounts, legal records, property deeds, and wills of the protagonists. Throughout, Harris discusses Handel's music, demonstrating the relevance and emotional immediacy of his texts and musical settings to his circle of friends and, by implication, to 18th-century audiences in general. Gracing the text are numerous illustrations, including reproductions of paintings, letters, and wills and multiple portraits of Handel at each stage of his life. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers. --Stanley Clyde Pelkey, Florida State University
Kirkus Review
An author of scholarly works about George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) returns with a more general work about the prolific composer and his milieu.Harris (Emeritus, Music/MIT;Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas, 2004) notes from the beginning that Handel left few documentsletters, journalsabout his personal life, so she elects to reconstruct the various worlds in which he moved. In this lushness of context, she argues, Handel will appearand so he does. The author also elects to write her text in the fashion of a fugue; she presents themes (Handels life, the culture, his friends, his music) and revisits them continuallya very effective way of reminding readers about key points and people. Harris begins with family and then charts Handels quick rise in the music world (so little is known about his youth) and his decision to move to England, where he lived the majority of his life and endeared himself both to the royals and the commoners. She examines the vagaries of his financial situation (he did well, for the most part), his various patrons, the composition of his operas (which he stopped doing in 1741) and his sex lifedid he have one? He never married, but most of his operas, notes the author, culminated with marriage. After his opera career, Handel shifted to oratorios, and Harris writes engagingly aboutMessiah, which he premiered in Dublin in 1742. The author tells us much about the lives of his intimates, some of whom were more assiduous about letter- and journal-writing. So, indirectly, we learn some about Handels reading, collecting (art, books about music) and his health, which featured some occasional paralytic attacks and a final blindness that ended his composing and playing. Harris also includes helpful timelines scattered throughout the text.Musical in structure, tone and emotional effect. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) is known and beloved the world over for his Messiah, but very little is known about the comp
Table of Contents
| List of Illustrations | p. ix |
| Dramatis Personæ | p. xiii |
| Prefatory Note | p. xxi |
| 1 Introductions: Handel and His Friends | p. 1 |
| 2 Before London: (1685-1710: German training, Italian sojourn, arrival in England) | p. 17 |
| 3 Politics, Patronage, and Pension: (1710-1727: Birthday Ode for Queen Anne to Riccardo primo for George II) | p. 37 |
| 4 Commerce and Trade: (1711-1730: Rinaldo to end of Royal Academy) | p. 77 |
| 5 Music at Home: (1715-1730: Chamber music and keyboard works, private concerts, publications) | p. 115 |
| 6 Marriage, Wealth, and Social Status: (1728-1741: The "second" Academy to the last opera, Deidamia) | p. 151 |
| 7 Ambition, Law, and Friendship: (1738-1749: Saul, Samson, Belshazzar, Susanna, Solomon) | p. 189 |
| 8 Making and Collecting: (1738-1750: Roubiliac sculpture of Handel, Alexander's Feast, concertos, collecting) | p. 227 |
| 9 Religion and Charity: (1739-1750: A look back at Esther, then Israel in Egypt, Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus, Theodora) | p. 265 |
| 10 Sickness and Death: (1737-1759: First "paralytic attack," a look back to Admeto, then madness in Saul and Hercules, and Jephtha to The Triumph of Time and Truth) | p. 301 |
| 11 Wills and Legacies | p. 341 |
| Appendix 1 Currency, Living Costs, Wages, and Fees | p. 373 |
| Appendix 2 A Very Select Discography | p. 381 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 389 |
| Select Bibliography | p. 391 |
| Notes | p. 411 |
| Index | p. 455 |