Download or read book George Frideric Handel A Life with Friends written by Ellen T. Harris and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-09-29 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Handel in London written by Jane Glover and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Lives of George Frideric Handel written by David Hunter and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2015 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How have Handel's 'lives' in biographies and histories moulded our understanding of the musician, the man and the icon?
Download or read book Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers written by Patrick Kavanaugh and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 1996 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Handel as Orpheus written by Ellen T. Harris and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2004-09-30 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Handel wrote over 100 cantatas, compositions for voice and instruments decsribing the joy and pain of love. In the first comprehensive study of the cantatas, Harris investigates their place in Handel's life as well as their extraordinary beauty.
Download or read book Handel s Bestiary written by Donna Leon and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2011-04-05 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “real tour de force” exploring the mythic history of animals in Handel’s operas complete with illustrations and audio recordings of the composer’s arias (News—Austria). When New York Times–bestselling novelist Donna Leon isn’t writing her Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries, she often listens to her favorite composer, George Frideric Handel. Leon noticed that Handel frequently references animals in his music. In his arias, Handel explores the perceived virtues and vices of the lion, bee, nightingale, snake, elephant, and tiger, among others. With this in mind, Leon combined her knowledge of medieval bestiaries—illustrated collections of animal stories—with her love of Handel. In Handel’s Bestiary, Leon traces twelve animals through history, mythology, and Handel’s arias. Each chapter is joined by original illustrations by German painter Michael Sowa. And in this enhanced edition, music is included from conductor Alan Curtis and his orchestra, Il Complesso Barocco.
Download or read book The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia written by Annette Landgraf and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Handel s Will written by George Frideric Handel and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dreaming with Open Eyes written by Ayana O. Smith and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dreaming with Open Eyes examines visual symbolism in late seventeenth-century Italian opera, contextualizing the genre amid the broad ocularcentric debates emerging at the crossroads of the early modern period and the Enlightenment. Ayana O. Smith reevaluates significant aspects of the Arcadian reform aesthetic and establishes a historically informed method of opera criticism for modern scholars and interpreters. Unfolding in a narrative fashion, the text explores facets of the philosophical and literary background and concludes with close readings of text and music, using visual symbolism to create readings of gender and character in two operas: Alessandro Scarlatti's La Statira (Rome, 1690), and Carlo Francesco Pollarolo's La forza della virtù (Venice, 1693). Smith’s interdisciplinary approach enhances our modern perception of this rich and underexplored repertory, and will appeal to students and scholars not only of opera, but also of literature, philosophy, and visual and intellectual cultures.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Baroque Music written by Joseph P. Swain and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-05-08 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Named a Library Journal Best Reference of 2023 - "Bravo! An invaluable source for scholars and concertgoers.” - Library Journal In the history of the Western musical tradition, the Baroque period traditionally dates from the turn of the 17th century to 1750. The beginning of the period is marked by Italian experiments in composition that attempted to create a new kind of secular musical art based upon principles of Greek drama, quickly leading to the invention of opera. The ending is marked by the death of Johann Sebastian Bach in 1750 and the completion of George Frideric Handel’s last English oratorio, Jephtha, the following year. The Historical Dictionary of Baroque Music, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 500 cross-referenced entries on composers, instruments, cities, and technical terms. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about baroque music.
Download or read book The Indispensable Composers written by Anthony Tommasini and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 505 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the question of greatness from the chief classical music critic of The New York Times Anthony Tommasini has devoted particular attention to living composers and overlooked repertory. But, as with all classical music lovers, the canon has remained central for him. Tommasini resists the neat laws of canon formation—and yet, he can’t help but admit that these exalted composers have guided him through his life, resonating with his deepest emotions and profoundly shaping how he sees the world. Now, in The Indispensable Composers, Tommasini offers his own personal guide to what the mercurial concept of greatness really means in classical music. As he argues for his particular pantheon of indispensable composers, Tommasini provides a masterclass in what to listen for and how to understand what music does to us.
Download or read book Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel written by John Mainwaring and published by . This book was released on 1760 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Cultural History of Law in the Age of Enlightenment written by Rebecca Probert and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The period of the Enlightenment was marked by innovation in political, cultural, religious, and educational ideas with the aim of improving the experience of human beings in society. Key to intellectual debates and day-to-day life were ideas about the law. Many looked to Britain, and to the British, as exemplars of a state governed by moderate laws under a moderate constitution. Britain's laws and constitution were portrayed and satirized in almost every artistic medium. A Cultural History of Law in the Age of Enlightenment presents essays spanning the “long 18th century” (1680 to 1820) which explore the place of law in a range of creative and artistic media, all of which flourished in a commercial society with law at its center and enlightenment as its aim. Drawing upon a wealth of visual and textual sources, A Cultural History of Law in the Age of Enlightenment presents essays that examine key cultural case studies of the period on the themes of justice, constitution, codes, agreements, arguments, property and possession, wrongs, and the legal profession.
Download or read book Literature and the Arts written by Anna Battigelli and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-13 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ten essays in Literature and the Arts explore the intermedial plenitude of eighteenth-century English culture, honoring the memory of James Anderson Winn, whose work demonstrated how seeing that interplay of the arts and literature was essential to a full understanding of Restoration and eighteenth-century English culture. Scenery, machinery, music, dance, and texts transformed one another, both enriching and complicating generic distinctions. Artists were alive to the power of the arts to reflect and shape reality, and their audience was quick to turn to the arts as performative pleasures and critical lenses through which to understand a changing world. This collection's eminent authors discuss estate design, musicalized theater, the visual spectacle of musical performance, stage machinery and set designs, the social uses of painting and singing, drama’s reflection of a transformed military infrastructure, and the arts of memory and of laughter.
Download or read book John Newton written by Jonathan Aitken and published by Crossway. This book was released on 2007 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the life of John Newton.
Download or read book Operatic Pasticcios in 18th Century Europe written by Berthold Over and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 799 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Early Modern times, techniques of assembling, compiling and arranging pre-existing material were part of the established working methods in many arts. In the world of 18th-century opera, such practices ensured that operas could become a commercial success because the substitution or compilation of arias fitting the singer's abilities proved the best recipe for fulfilling the expectations of audiences. Known as »pasticcios« since the 18th-century, these operas have long been considered inferior patchwork. The volume collects essays that reconsider the pasticcio, contextualize it, define its preconditions, look at its material aspects and uncover its aesthetical principles.
Download or read book Milton and Music written by Seth Herbst and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-04-03 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Milton and Music is the first study to juxtapose John Milton’s poetry on music with later musical adaptations of his work. In Part I: Milton on Music, Seth Herbst shows that writing about music galvanized Milton’s intellectual development towards animist materialism, the belief that everything in the universe—even the human soul—is made of matter. The Milton who emerges is a forward-thinking visionary who leaped past his contemporaries in conceiving music as a material phenomenon that exists simultaneously as sound and metaphor. Part II: Milton in Music follows two daring composers in investigating whether Milton’s visionary concept of music can be realized in actual musical sound. In Samson, an oratorio adaptation of Milton’s Samson Agonistes, Handel resists Miltonic music theory, suggesting that music struggles to function as both sound and metaphor. By contrast, the twentieth-century Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki composes an iconoclastic opera of Paradise Lost that develops a soundworld of fractured dissonance in which music acts as both sound and metaphor. Recovering Milton’s own high estimation of music from a critical tradition that has subordinated it to the poet’s political and religious convictions, Herbst reveals Milton as an interdisciplinary thinker and overlooked figure in the study of words and music. Driven by bold claims about the comparative treatment of literature and music, Milton and Music revises our understanding of what makes this canonical poet an intellectual revolutionary.
