Handel

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Book!
Review: For anyone who is interested in Handel and his life and times, this book is for you. A treasure trove of information, Hogwood takes the reader on an fascinating trip through time, exploring Handel's childhood and early years, his prodigious development in music, his tours through Italy, the Opera and Oratorio years in England, and what happened after his death. Packed full of photographs, and reprints of contemporary documents, this book is a feast for the eye and the mind. A chronological table is also included, making it easy to track the events in Handel's career with one glance.

I would certainly recommend this book.

E.A. Bucchianeri, author of "A Compendium of Essays: Purcell, Hogarth and Handel, Beethoven, Liszt, Debussy, and Andrew Lloyd Webber" and "Handel's Path to Covent Garden: A Rocky Journey".

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Book!
Review: For anyone who is interested in Handel and his life and times, this book is for you. A treasure trove of information, Hogwood takes the reader on an fascinating trip through time, exploring Handel's childhood and early years, his prodigious development in music, his tours through Italy, the Opera and Oratorio years in England, and what happened after his death. Packed full of photographs, and reprints of contemporary documents, this book is a feast for the eye and the mind. A chronological table is also included, making it easy to track the events in Handel's career with one glance.

I would certainly recommend this book.

E.A. Bucchianeri, author of "A Compendium of Essays: Purcell, Hogarth and Handel, Beethoven, Liszt, Debussy, and Andrew Lloyd Webber" and "Handel's Path to Covent Garden: A Rocky Journey".

Rating:
Summary: Meticulous Work On This Major Composer
Review: Hogwood intensely and carefully chronicles Handel's life year by year, beginning at his birth and continuing with his effects into the twentieth century.

From his Italian days to his real love with Italian opera and its failure to take hold of English entertainment to his renowned oratorios, Hogwood exhastively probes the history of the background and creative birth to his most known works.

A Lutheran, some of Handel's greatest works were Scripture inspired, e.g. Israel in Egypt and of course The Messiah. Intersting to learn of its debut in of all places, Dublin, Ireland. The subsequent Handel Festivals after his death growing to over 4,000 performers and audiences at a single setting of over 85,000 are astounding.

There is much to be gleaned from this reading, e.g. that Handel considered Messiah to be more of an Easter piece than its standard Christmas fare.

Excellent work by a significant performer, musiciologist and writer.

Rating:
Summary: Truly excellent
Review: I am amazed by Christopher Hogwood's book. Not only is Hogwood the leader of the brilliant period-instruments ensemble The Academy of Ancient Music and one of the finest conductors of early music, but he is also an outstanding musicologist and writer. He is intelligent and unflagginly entertaining in his narrative representation of Handel's life and works. Especially the chapter 5 on "the Oratorios" may well be the best introduction to Handel's oratorios at all. The book contains also a chronological table, 100 fine illustrations (10 in color), and a map. So If you are interested in musical history and G. F. Handel (1685-1759) this biography is a must.