George Frideric Handel
Description
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.
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Content
- Intro
- Title
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Dramatis Personæ
- Prefatory 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
- Appendix 1: Currency, Living Costs, Wages, and Fees
- Appendix 2: A Very Select Discography
- Acknowledgments
- Select Bibliography
- Notes
- Index
- Copyright
