The Making of Handel's Messiah

The Making of Handel's Messiah PDF Author: Andrew Gant
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781851245062
Category : Composers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first performance of Handel's 'Messiah' in Dublin in 1742 is now legendary. Gentlemen were asked to leave their swords at home and ladies to come without hoops in their skirts in order to fit more people into the audience. Why then, did this now famous and much-loved oratorio receive a somewhat cool reception in London less than a year later? Placing Handel's best-known work in the context of its times, this vivid account charts the composer's working relationship with his librettist, the gifted but demanding Charles Jennens, and looks at Handel's varied and evolving company of singers together with his royal patronage. Through examination of the composition manuscript and Handel's own conducting score, held in the Bodleian, it explores the complex issues around the performance of sacred texts in a non-sacred context, particularly Handel's collaboration with the men and boys of the Chapel Royal. The later reception and performance history of what is one of the most successful pieces of choral music of all time is also reviewed, including the festival performance attended by Haydn, the massed-choir tradition of the Victorian period and today's 'come-and-sing' events.

The Making of Handel's Messiah

The Making of Handel's Messiah PDF Author: Andrew Gant
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781851245062
Category : Composers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first performance of Handel's 'Messiah' in Dublin in 1742 is now legendary. Gentlemen were asked to leave their swords at home and ladies to come without hoops in their skirts in order to fit more people into the audience. Why then, did this now famous and much-loved oratorio receive a somewhat cool reception in London less than a year later? Placing Handel's best-known work in the context of its times, this vivid account charts the composer's working relationship with his librettist, the gifted but demanding Charles Jennens, and looks at Handel's varied and evolving company of singers together with his royal patronage. Through examination of the composition manuscript and Handel's own conducting score, held in the Bodleian, it explores the complex issues around the performance of sacred texts in a non-sacred context, particularly Handel's collaboration with the men and boys of the Chapel Royal. The later reception and performance history of what is one of the most successful pieces of choral music of all time is also reviewed, including the festival performance attended by Haydn, the massed-choir tradition of the Victorian period and today's 'come-and-sing' events.

Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers

Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers PDF Author: Patrick Kavanaugh
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310208068
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is a compelling and inspiring look at spiritual beliefs that influenced some of the world's greatest composers, now revised and expanded with eight additional composers.

Handel

Handel PDF Author: Jonathan Keates
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1407020838
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 458

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jonathan Keates original biography of Handel was hailed as a masterpiece on its publication in 1985. This fully revised and updated new edition - published to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the composers death - charts in detail Handel's life, from his youth in Germany, through his brilliantly successful Italian sojourn, to the opulence and squalor of Georgian London where he made his permanent home. For over two decades Handel was absorbed in London's heady but precarious operatic world. But even his phenomenal energy and determination could not overcome the public's growing indifference to Italian opera in the 1730s, and he turned finally to oratorio, a genre which he made peculiarly his own and in which he created some of his finest works, such as Saul, Messiah, Belshazzar and Jephtha. Over the last two decades a complete revolution in Handel's status has taken place. He is now seen both as a titanic figure in music, whose compositions have found a permanent place in the international repertoire, and as one of the world's favourite composers, with snatches of his work accompanying weddings, funerals and television commercials the world over. Skillfully interwoven with the account of Handel's life are commentaries on all his major works, as well as many less familiar pieces by this most inventive, expressive and captivating of composers. Handel was an extraordinary genius whose career abounded in reversals that would have crushed anyone with less resilience and will power, and Jonathan Keates writes about his life and work with sympathy and scrutiny.

The Sacred Oratorio

The Sacred Oratorio PDF Author: Charles Jennens
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 12

Get Book Here

Book Description


Handel

Handel PDF Author: Donald Burrows
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521376204
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Get Book Here

Book Description
This new guide to Handel's most celebrated work traces the course of Messiah from Handel's initial musical response to the libretto, through the oratorio's turbulent first years to its eventual popularity with the Foundling Hospital performances. Different chapters consider the varying reception the work received in Dublin and London, the uneasy relationship between the composer and his librettist Charles Jennens and the many changes Messiah underwent through the varying needs and capacities of Handel's performers. As well as tracing the history of the work's development, the book addresses musical and technical issues such as Messiah's place in the oratorio genre, Handel's treatment of structural design, tonal relationships and English word-setting. An edited libretto elucidates the variants between the text that Handel set and the texts of the early printed word-books. Donald Burrows brings many new insights to this fascinating account of one of the favourite works of the concert hall.

Charles Jennens

Charles Jennens PDF Author: Ruth Smith
Publisher: Handle House Trust
ISBN: 9780956099822
Category : Authors, English
Languages : en
Pages : 71

Get Book Here

Book Description
In a major new exhibition the Handel House Museum explores the life, work and character of Handel's great collaborator Charles Jennens. An enigmatic character, Jennens had an enormous influence on Handel's life and work. As librettist for the oratorios Saul and Belshazzar, he provided the composer with words that inspired some of his most challenging and exciting music. His carefully chosen scripture selection for Messiah was to inspire Handel to even greater creative heights, and together these two men created one of the greatest musical works of all timeThe exhibition's curator is Dr Ruth Smith, author of Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought (CUP), who has made a particular study of the life and work of Charles Jennens.

St Paul, Op. 36

St Paul, Op. 36 PDF Author: Felix Mendelssohn
Publisher: Serenissima Music, Inc.
ISBN: 9781932419818
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description
Mendelssohn's first great excursion into the genre of oratorio was first performed in 1836 in Düsseldorf at a festival. Set to a libretto by Julius Schubring based on the Bible, it soon gained considerable popularity in England, which resulted in his famous second oratorio, Elijah. The definitive vocal score reprinted here, edited by the German musicologist Alfred Dörffel, with a piano reduction prepared by the composer's student August Horn, features both the original German and the subsequent English text. First issued around 1890 by C. F. Peters, this digitally-enhanced reprint has been enlarged to a very readable A4 size, with measure numbers and rehearsal letters added. Matching orchestra parts and full score now also available (92661).

Listen

Listen PDF Author: Joseph Kerman
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0312593473
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 475

Get Book Here

Book Description
DVD contains 30 minutes of video excerpts and 16 audio tracks, keyed to the text.

Handel in London

Handel in London PDF Author: Jane Glover
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681779471
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 391

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1712, a young German composer followed his princely master to London and would remain there for the rest of his life. That master would become King George II and the composer was George Freidrich Handel. Handel, then still only twenty-seven and largely self-taught, would be at the heart of music activity in London for the next four decades, composing masterpiece after masterpiece, whether the glorious coronation anthem, Zadok the Priest, operas such as Rinaldo and Alcina or the great oratorios, culminating, of course, in Messiah. Here, Jane Glover, who has conducted Handel’s work in opera houses and concert halls throughout the world, draws on her profound understanding of music and musicians to tell Handel’s story. It is a story of music-making and musicianship, but also of courts and cabals of theatrical rivalries and of eighteenth-century society. It is also, of course the story of some of the most remarkable music ever written, music that has been played and sung, and loved, in this country—and throughout the world—for three hundred years.

Classical Music

Classical Music PDF Author: Alexander J. Morin
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9780879306380
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 1220

Get Book Here

Book Description
Encompassing more than five hundred classical composers past and present, this listener's guide to classical music discusses the best recordings of symphonies, operas, choral pieces, chamber music, and more by the world's leading composers as performed by a variety of outstanding musicians and conductors, and includes essays on the classical repertory, composers, instruments, and more. Original.