Description
Book SynopsisHow have Handel's 'lives' in biographies and histories moulded our understanding of the musician, the man and the icon? To evaluate the familiar, even over-familiar, story of Handel's life could be seen as a quixotic endeavour. How can there be anything new to say? This book seeks to distinguish fact from fiction, not only to produce a new biography but also to explore the concepts of biography and dissemination by using Handel's life and lives as a case study. By examining the images of Handel to be found in biographies and music histories - the genius, the religious profound, the master of musical styles, the distiller into music of English sentiment, the glorifier of the Hanoverians, the hymner of the middle class, the independent, the prodigious, the generous, the sexless, the successful, the wealthy, the bankrupt, the pious, the crude, the heroic, the devious, the battler of ill-fortune, the moral exemplar - and by adding new factual information, David Hunter shows how events are manipulated into stories and tropes. Onesuch trope has been employed to portray numerous persons as Handel's enemies regardless of whether Handel considered them as such. Picking apart the writing of Handel's biographers and other reporters, Hunter exposes the narrative underpinnings - the lies, confusions, presumptions, and conclusions, whether direct and inferred or assumed - to show how Handel's 'lives' in biographies and histories have moulded our understanding of the musician, the man andthe icon. DAVID HUNTER is Music Librarian at the University of Texas at Austin.
Trade ReviewAt the heart of his project is an attempt to explore the gap between image and individual-in this case, between 'Handel' and Handel. Handel as image, argues Hunter, is a phenomenon that has superseded Handel the person.the care and intelligence with which Hunter interrogates the facts of Handel's life, and their use by biographers, should attract the attention of all readers interested in the perils and pleasures of biography. * EARLY MUSIC *
[A] unique contribution to Handel scholarship. * MUSIC & LETTERS *
Handel was an early entrepreneurial composer: he owned his own opera company, he borrowed from himself and others to increase his musical output, and he was impressively resourceful for his time. This study focuses on the multiple representations of Handel that were at least partly a result of his legendary resourcefulness as well as on questions that remain about his sexuality, health (disability), nationalism, friends and acquaintances, and so on. * CHOICE *
Table of ContentsIntroduction The Audience: Three Broad Categories, Three Gross Errors The Audience: Partner and Problem Musicians and Other Occupational Hazards Patrons and Pensions Musical Genres and Compositional Practices Self and Health Self and Friends Nations and Stories Biographers' Stories Conclusion Bibliography
