The Cambridge Companion to Handel

The Cambridge Companion to Handel
Author: Donald Burrows
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 1997-12-04
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1139825216

Handel is recognised as one of the principal creative figures in Baroque music. In this Companion acknowledged experts on Handel make their expertise accessible to the interested general reader and music lover. All the genres in which Handel composed are considered including oratorio, chamber cantata, opera, and church music, as well as works for the keyboard and orchestra. The wide-ranging, specially-commissioned essays cover topics from Handel's composing methods to his treatment of the Italian language and matters of performance practice. The background to Handel's musical career is a major theme of the volume. The opening chapters deal with his musical education in Germany and the circumstances in Italy during his time there. Most of Handel's career was based in London and important topics here include contemporary concert life and theatre management, the British and Italian musicians among whom he worked, and the librettists for the English oratorios.

The Cambridge Companion to Handel

The Cambridge Companion to Handel
Author: Donald Burrows
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 1997-12-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780521456135

A Companion to one of the principal creative figures in Baroque music.

The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia

The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia
Author: Annette Landgraf
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013-10-24
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9781107666405

George Frideric Handel was born and educated in Germany, flourished in Italy, and chose to become British. One of the most cosmopolitan of the great composers, much of Handel's music has remained in the popular repertory since his lifetime, and a broad variety of his music theatre works from Italian operas to English oratorios have experienced a dramatic renaissance since the late twentieth century. A large number of publications devoted to Handel's life and music have appeared from his own time to the present day, but The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia gathers the full range of present knowledge and leading scholarship into a single volume for convenient and illuminating reference. Packed with well over 700 informative and accessible entries, both long and short, this book is ideal for performers, scholars, students and music lovers who wish to explore the Handelian world.

The Cambridge Companion to the Harpsichord

The Cambridge Companion to the Harpsichord
Author: Mark Kroll
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2019-01-03
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1107156076

Covers every aspect of the harpsichord and its music, including composers, genres, national styles, tuning, and the art of harpsichord building.

The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Opera

The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Opera
Author: Anthony R. DelDonna
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2009-06-25
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1139828177

Reflecting a wide variety of approaches to eighteenth-century opera, this Companion brings together leading international experts in the field to provide a valuable reference source. Viewing opera as a complex and fascinating form of art and social ritual, rather than reducing it simply to music and text analysis, individual essays investigate aspects such as audiences, architecture of the theaters, marketing, acting style, and the politics and strategy of representing class and gender. Overall, the volume provides a synthesis of well established knowledge, reflects recent research on eighteenth-century opera, and stimulates further research. The reader is encouraged to view opera as a cultural phenomenon that can reveal aspects of our culture, both past and present. Eighteenth-century opera is experiencing continuing critical and popular success through innovative and provoking productions world-wide, and this Companion will appeal to opera goers as well as to students and teachers of this key topic.

The Cambridge Companion to Opera Studies

The Cambridge Companion to Opera Studies
Author: Nicholas Till
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2012-10-18
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1107495199

With its powerful combination of music and theatre, opera is one of the most complex and yet immediate of all art forms. Once opera was studied only as 'a stepchild of musicology', but in the past two decades opera studies have experienced an explosion of energy with the introduction of new approaches drawn from disciplines such as social anthropology and performance studies to media theory, genre theory, gender studies and reception history. Written by leading scholars in opera studies today, this Companion offers a wide-ranging guide to a rapidly expanding field of study and new ways of thinking about a rich and intriguing art form, placing opera back at the centre of our understanding of Western culture over the past 400 years. This book gives lovers of opera as well as those studying the subject a comprehensive approach to the many facets of opera in the past and today.

The Cambridge Companion to the Concerto

The Cambridge Companion to the Concerto
Author: Simon P. Keefe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 591
Release: 2005-10-27
Genre: Music
ISBN: 113982726X

No musical genre has had a more chequered critical history than the concerto and yet simultaneously retained as consistently prominent a place in the affections of the concert-going public. This volume, one of very few to deal with the genre in its entirety, assumes a broad remit, setting the concerto in its musical and non-musical contexts, examining the concertos that have made important contributions to musical culture, and looking at performance-related topics. A picture emerges of a genre in a continual state of change, re-inventing itself in the process of growth and development and regularly challenging its performers and listeners to broaden the horizons of their musical experience.

Handel

Handel
Author: Donald Burrows
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 144
Release: 1991-06-24
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780521376204

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.

The Faber Pocket Guide to Handel

The Faber Pocket Guide to Handel
Author: Edward Blakeman
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2011-02-03
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0571268803

The Faber Pocket Guide to Handel offers a detailed but accessible exploration of George Frederick Handel, his composition, and his legacy. A larger-than-life figure in his time, Handel's reputation has been less than steady since his death in 1759. Was he (in the words of Berlioz) just 'a great barrel of pork and beer', or (as Handel himself claimed) truly 'the master of us all'? Now, more than 250 years after his death, there is more interest in Handel than ever before, with his operas (such as Rinaldo and Agrippina) experiencing fantastic renewed popularity. This lively new Pocket Guide goes in search of the composer who wrote the Messiah, Water Music - and much more. Handy for browsing and reference, key features include: - Handel's life: year by year - Handel's operas: a complete guide - Essential Handel - Picturing Handel - Handel on CD and DVD - Handel Online Edward Blakeman assesses how Handel's works - incredibly influential in their context of baroque music - have stood the test of time and why they can still speak thrillingly to us today. With recommendations throughout for listening, further reading, and web surfing, this is the ideal guide for music lovers who want to discover the great composer for themselves.

Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought

Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought
Author: Ruth Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 502
Release: 1995-05-04
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0521402654

In this wide-r anging and challenging book, Ruth Smith claims that the words to Handel's oratorios reflect the events and ideas of their time and have far greater meaning than has hitherto been realised. She explores eighteenth-century literature, music, aesthetics, politics and religion to reveal Handel's texts as conduits for the thought and sensibility of their time. The book thus enriches our understanding of Handel, his times, and the close relationship between music and its intellectual contexts.