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    George Frideric Handel : a life with friends / Ellen T. Harris.

    • Title:George Frideric Handel : a life with friends / Ellen T. Harris.
    •    
    • Author/Creator:Harris, Ellen T., author.
    • Published/Created:New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2014]
    • Holdings

       
    • Library of Congress Subjects:Handel, George Frideric, 1685-1759.
      Composers--Biography.
    • Genre/Form:Biographies.
    • Description:xxi, 472 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
    • 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.
    • Notes:Includes bibliographical references, discography (pages 381-387) and index.
    • ISBN:9780393088953 (hbk.)
      0393088952 (hbk.)
    • Contents:Machine generated contents note: 1. Introductions: Handel and His Friends
      2. Before London
      (1685
      1710: German training, Italian sojourn, arrival in England)
      3. Politics, Patronage, and Pension
      (1710
      1727: Birthday Ode for Queen Anne to Riccardo primo for George II)
      4. Commerce and Trade
      (1711
      1730: Rinaldo to end of Royal Academy)
      5. Music at Home
      (1715
      1730: Chamber music and keyboard works, private concerts, publications)
      6. Marriage, Wealth, and Social Status
      (1728
      1741: The "second" Academy to the last opera, Deidamia)
      7. Ambition, Law, and Friendship
      (1738
      1749: Saul, Samson, Belshazzar, Susanna, Solomon)
      8. Making and Collecting
      (1738
      1750: Roubiliac sculpture of Handel, Alexander's Feast, concertos, collecting)
      9. Religion and Charity
      (1739
      1750: A look back at Esther, then Israel in Egypt, Messiah, Judas Maccabaeus, Theodora)
      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)
      11. Wills and Legacies.
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