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Handel
A look back at the original Handel, providing a portrait of his life and music that blends the evidence from documents of all kinds with biographical observation. It contains a chronological table and traces the Handel legend down to our own time.
312 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
October 27, 2019
Nice, compact biography intended for non-specialist public (I'm part of that public), well-researched with revealing quotations from period journals and correspondence (though Hogwood's citation practice and non-use of footnotes are utter nightmare for an OCD academic). There are also tons of recommended literature for anyone willing to dig deeper, which I'll surely make use of. As a semi-masochistic fan of Händel (yes, I'll not refrain from using Umlaut) and especially full-masochistic fan of his operas, I learned a lot here, and - to my dilettante's delight - confirmed some of the stuff I gathered from simply listening to music and, sometimes, following the libretti. Some highlights:
1. The degree to which Händel recycled himself and "borrowed" - less kindly ones would have said "stolen" - from other composers is quite astonishing, much more than I imagined. Today, Händel would have had sued the shit out of him before he would have laid his pen to write first five tones of "Lascia ch'io pianga". Which makes you kind of wonder whether are current system of copyright (cf. e.g. the limitations of sampling in ECJ's C-476/17 "Metall auf Metall" judgment, developing in music the ridiculously strict Infopaq standard) is best one, given it would have had prevented the production of what are currently unambiguously recognized as masterpieces.
2. On the other hand, Händel's liberty in borrowing has always been risky and kind of issue. Hogwood's list some defences, the funniest being 19th century defense that any composer should feel honored if Händel's stolen from him - no harm is done to such composer, but his art and reputation is elevated by being re-used by Händel. Hogwood wittily comments that in such attitude we can feel the ideology of British imperialism. Spot on.
3. Politics of the reception are quite funny here, overall. As far as British classical music goes, there's Purcell and then there's Vaughn Williams. In between is this German-born Italian-educated composer who made his name as composer of Italian operas and invented English oratorio only accidentaly - in 1737, when trying to revive once-amateur opera Esther from 1718 as professional opera, he's been stopped from doing so by the Bishop who wanted no Biblical stories on stage. Händel said OK, so I'm going to do a concert version - and thus oratorio has been born. Anyway, back to politics: in between Purcell and Vaughn Williams there's Händel, non-ironically considered the greatest English composer. This is funny enough, but Hogwood lists another 19th century assessments which go much further: because, what should one conclude from the fact that such genius settled precisely in England to compose Italian operas there? Nothing less than that English are the greatest and most musical nation in the world. Hard not to think about Brexit here.
4. Back to music: it's refreshing to know that Italian opera seria was always considered a bit silly and, well, a bit stupid. I noted to myself after seeing Vivaldi's Arsilda in staging apparently trying to reveal some "timeless truths" in that opera that opera seria can be considered "still actual" only in that it has never been actual, that it has always been a very weird enterprise. Hogwood's inquiry mostly confirms this.
5. Because opera seria is so relentlessly stupid and yet so beautiful and pure, it can be considered as 18th century's l'art-pour-l'artism and it is also why it offers itself so well to rigorous, minute academic dissections of HIP movement (although one could argue that the late performance of likes of Haïm or Minkowski are somewhat freer and subversive compared more disciplined takes of likes of Curtis, Christie, Gardiner or, well, Hogwood himself - and he makes his preference apparent by the end of the book, too). But it's also intriguing to know that when Händel's operas were first revived since 1754 in 1920s in Germany (with one of the goals being to reclaim Händel back from the British for the Germans), it's been done with cutting-edge avantgarde and abstract stagings. Händel's operas were considered as perfectly formalistic response to heaviness of dominant Wagner's Gesamtskunstwerk. Simply said: because libretti are stupid, you can safely ignore them and thus have a cake and eat it, too: stage an opera, and yet present it as absolute music. Perceptive listener can find a degree to which post-war total serialism (though not interbellum serialism) is indebted to Bach's music-qua-scientific-treatise such as Kunst der Fuge - but imho more intriguing links open themselves towards Händel.
6. Where Hogwood corrects my prejudices is in considering Händel to be always commercially successful and keeping with pulse of the mainstream taste. When sum of his stature and sum of his finances was done on the day he died, he was obviously successful. But Hogwood shows that this was not always so, that he had so many detractors, that he used to somehow lag behind the changes in taste. In particular, it took him some time and some persuading to abandon operas in favour of oratorios. Now - we use to imagine three kinds of figures: those who were shit and recognized as such and now we don't know their names; those who were reverred in their times and either are reverred now (here I used to list Händel unproblematically) or are mostly forgotten (say, Hasse, Porpora, Giovanni Bononcini, etc.); and those who were ahead of their time and misunderstood, but now we - much more advanced audience, of course - understand them well (here consider Bach). Now, Händel wasn't ahead of his time, but he went through unhappy periods where he was considered out of fashion, simply because he loved Italian operas too much. This is weird because, well, Händel was apparently a genius and the genre of opera seria is absurd - and how could have a genius missed that? But let me propose a heretical retort: the genius resides precisely in this deep love - and it doesn't matter if this love is directed towards absurd, stupid, pointless, unnattainable - and even one can say that there's more genius the more absurd the object of deep love, the more one devotes to the pointless activity. Schubert wrote some of his most beautiful Lieder to the most horrid poetry. Although to counteract - Carl Maria von Weber managed to compose astonishingly failure of a music to mind-numbingly idiotic libretto in Oberon. So the proposition needs to be worked out. But provisionally I can make another arc to avantgarde post-war music - to AMM which in one of the titles of their meaningless free-improv asks the most fundamental question in musical perception: "What is there in uselesness to cause you distress?"
1. The degree to which Händel recycled himself and "borrowed" - less kindly ones would have said "stolen" - from other composers is quite astonishing, much more than I imagined. Today, Händel would have had sued the shit out of him before he would have laid his pen to write first five tones of "Lascia ch'io pianga". Which makes you kind of wonder whether are current system of copyright (cf. e.g. the limitations of sampling in ECJ's C-476/17 "Metall auf Metall" judgment, developing in music the ridiculously strict Infopaq standard) is best one, given it would have had prevented the production of what are currently unambiguously recognized as masterpieces.
2. On the other hand, Händel's liberty in borrowing has always been risky and kind of issue. Hogwood's list some defences, the funniest being 19th century defense that any composer should feel honored if Händel's stolen from him - no harm is done to such composer, but his art and reputation is elevated by being re-used by Händel. Hogwood wittily comments that in such attitude we can feel the ideology of British imperialism. Spot on.
3. Politics of the reception are quite funny here, overall. As far as British classical music goes, there's Purcell and then there's Vaughn Williams. In between is this German-born Italian-educated composer who made his name as composer of Italian operas and invented English oratorio only accidentaly - in 1737, when trying to revive once-amateur opera Esther from 1718 as professional opera, he's been stopped from doing so by the Bishop who wanted no Biblical stories on stage. Händel said OK, so I'm going to do a concert version - and thus oratorio has been born. Anyway, back to politics: in between Purcell and Vaughn Williams there's Händel, non-ironically considered the greatest English composer. This is funny enough, but Hogwood lists another 19th century assessments which go much further: because, what should one conclude from the fact that such genius settled precisely in England to compose Italian operas there? Nothing less than that English are the greatest and most musical nation in the world. Hard not to think about Brexit here.
4. Back to music: it's refreshing to know that Italian opera seria was always considered a bit silly and, well, a bit stupid. I noted to myself after seeing Vivaldi's Arsilda in staging apparently trying to reveal some "timeless truths" in that opera that opera seria can be considered "still actual" only in that it has never been actual, that it has always been a very weird enterprise. Hogwood's inquiry mostly confirms this.
5. Because opera seria is so relentlessly stupid and yet so beautiful and pure, it can be considered as 18th century's l'art-pour-l'artism and it is also why it offers itself so well to rigorous, minute academic dissections of HIP movement (although one could argue that the late performance of likes of Haïm or Minkowski are somewhat freer and subversive compared more disciplined takes of likes of Curtis, Christie, Gardiner or, well, Hogwood himself - and he makes his preference apparent by the end of the book, too). But it's also intriguing to know that when Händel's operas were first revived since 1754 in 1920s in Germany (with one of the goals being to reclaim Händel back from the British for the Germans), it's been done with cutting-edge avantgarde and abstract stagings. Händel's operas were considered as perfectly formalistic response to heaviness of dominant Wagner's Gesamtskunstwerk. Simply said: because libretti are stupid, you can safely ignore them and thus have a cake and eat it, too: stage an opera, and yet present it as absolute music. Perceptive listener can find a degree to which post-war total serialism (though not interbellum serialism) is indebted to Bach's music-qua-scientific-treatise such as Kunst der Fuge - but imho more intriguing links open themselves towards Händel.
6. Where Hogwood corrects my prejudices is in considering Händel to be always commercially successful and keeping with pulse of the mainstream taste. When sum of his stature and sum of his finances was done on the day he died, he was obviously successful. But Hogwood shows that this was not always so, that he had so many detractors, that he used to somehow lag behind the changes in taste. In particular, it took him some time and some persuading to abandon operas in favour of oratorios. Now - we use to imagine three kinds of figures: those who were shit and recognized as such and now we don't know their names; those who were reverred in their times and either are reverred now (here I used to list Händel unproblematically) or are mostly forgotten (say, Hasse, Porpora, Giovanni Bononcini, etc.); and those who were ahead of their time and misunderstood, but now we - much more advanced audience, of course - understand them well (here consider Bach). Now, Händel wasn't ahead of his time, but he went through unhappy periods where he was considered out of fashion, simply because he loved Italian operas too much. This is weird because, well, Händel was apparently a genius and the genre of opera seria is absurd - and how could have a genius missed that? But let me propose a heretical retort: the genius resides precisely in this deep love - and it doesn't matter if this love is directed towards absurd, stupid, pointless, unnattainable - and even one can say that there's more genius the more absurd the object of deep love, the more one devotes to the pointless activity. Schubert wrote some of his most beautiful Lieder to the most horrid poetry. Although to counteract - Carl Maria von Weber managed to compose astonishingly failure of a music to mind-numbingly idiotic libretto in Oberon. So the proposition needs to be worked out. But provisionally I can make another arc to avantgarde post-war music - to AMM which in one of the titles of their meaningless free-improv asks the most fundamental question in musical perception: "What is there in uselesness to cause you distress?"
January 3, 2026
A comprehensive and authoritative biography of the great composer, George Frederick Handel written by esteemed scholar and performer, Cristopher Hogwood. The book is well-researched with reference to many contemporary documents and features many colourful pictures and illustrations.
May 17, 2010
For anyone who is generally interested in Handel, or commencing music studies of the late Baroque period, this book is for you. An accessible treasure trove of information, Hogwood takes the reader on an fascinating trip through time, exploring Handel's childhood and early years in Germany, his prodigious development in music, his Grand Tours through Italy, the Opera and Oratorio years in England, and his musical legacy after his death. Packed full of photographs, snippets of interesting quotations 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. There is also an extensive bibliography -- the only drawback is the fact Hogwood does not indicate exactly where he sourced his information, i.e. there is an astonishing lack of footnotes, therefore it is impossible to know which of the books listed in the bibliography would be of use to follow up on the information he provides if required for more in-depth research. Nevertheless, 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".
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".
July 13, 2017
Dry, dry, dry. However, it seemed EXTREMELY well researched. If you're writing a paper or need historical information on the man whatsoever, start here. I highly doubt you'll need any other sources than those listed in the bibliography. I did not enjoy the book but it gets three stars for researched content and coherence.
July 22, 2020
Handel makes an interesting case in the tension that exists between a composer and his works. On the one hand, Handel has had a good reputation largely because of the strength of his works that has served, especially his oratorios (which have always appealed to a wide audience because they could be sung by amateur musicians like myself) as well as his Water Music. On the other hand, his dissolute lifestyle and his tendency to get involved in foolish disputes (like the rivalry he had with a noble-supported opera company), his affairs with singers, and his plagiarism and the controversial use of biblical material in his oratorios attracted a high degree of criticism from pious Englishmen in his own time and have also led to criticism of him in our own time. Handel is clearly a major composer but he is equally clearly someone whose life and musical approach had some difficulties, and the sheer amount of plagiarism and self-plagiarism to be found here as Handel sought to share the same sort of scraps and pastiches over and over again is somewhat distressing to read as it takes up a large amount of this work, because the author is interested in this matter.
This book is about 300 pages long and is divided into six large chapters. The book begins with a map and a preface. After that the author talks about Handel's youth and education in Halle and Hamburg (1) as well as his Italian years (2) that provided him his basic approach to composition in the way that he learned how to copy himself and others in the rapid writing of not particularly original operas at a massive amount to meet the demand that Italians had in it. After that the author spends three chapters discussing the rest of Handel's life as a composer in London and Great Britain as a whole thanks to the patronage of the Hanoverians. First, the author discusses Handel's time in London during the heyday of opera there from 1710-1729, where there is a discussion of every opera he wrote during the period and his business dealings and personal affairs (4). After that there is a discussion of the decline of opera where Handel engaged in a ruinous feud that harmed his reputation and income (5) and health even. Finally, the author discusses the way that oratorios provided for success as well as a lasting reputation (6), which leads naturally to a look at Handel and posterity with his death and his postlife reputation (7), which is then followed by a chronological table, select bibliography, list of illustrations and index.
How one will enjoy and appreciate a work like this depends in large part on what the reader of this work is really interested in. As a reader, I happen to be interested in Handel's music, but not to the extent that I care about him as a businessman trying to run an opera company. Nor does the author's interest in pastiches strike me as the best way of showcasing Handel's creativity as a composer. Indeed, the author's discussion of Handel's behavior, which would be precisely what was expected of the Italian opera composers of his time, does not follow the sensibilities that contemporary music listeners have about the creativity of composers. This is a work that rushes through the creation of the Messiah and other works that the reader is likely to be interested in and spends a huge amount of time discussing Handel's relationship with the Hanoverian dynasty. Some people will appreciate this but others will not because at least for this reader, the work emphasized those elements of Handel's life and art that I was least interested in and de-emphasized those aspects I was most interested in, and that is a great shame.
This book is about 300 pages long and is divided into six large chapters. The book begins with a map and a preface. After that the author talks about Handel's youth and education in Halle and Hamburg (1) as well as his Italian years (2) that provided him his basic approach to composition in the way that he learned how to copy himself and others in the rapid writing of not particularly original operas at a massive amount to meet the demand that Italians had in it. After that the author spends three chapters discussing the rest of Handel's life as a composer in London and Great Britain as a whole thanks to the patronage of the Hanoverians. First, the author discusses Handel's time in London during the heyday of opera there from 1710-1729, where there is a discussion of every opera he wrote during the period and his business dealings and personal affairs (4). After that there is a discussion of the decline of opera where Handel engaged in a ruinous feud that harmed his reputation and income (5) and health even. Finally, the author discusses the way that oratorios provided for success as well as a lasting reputation (6), which leads naturally to a look at Handel and posterity with his death and his postlife reputation (7), which is then followed by a chronological table, select bibliography, list of illustrations and index.
How one will enjoy and appreciate a work like this depends in large part on what the reader of this work is really interested in. As a reader, I happen to be interested in Handel's music, but not to the extent that I care about him as a businessman trying to run an opera company. Nor does the author's interest in pastiches strike me as the best way of showcasing Handel's creativity as a composer. Indeed, the author's discussion of Handel's behavior, which would be precisely what was expected of the Italian opera composers of his time, does not follow the sensibilities that contemporary music listeners have about the creativity of composers. This is a work that rushes through the creation of the Messiah and other works that the reader is likely to be interested in and spends a huge amount of time discussing Handel's relationship with the Hanoverian dynasty. Some people will appreciate this but others will not because at least for this reader, the work emphasized those elements of Handel's life and art that I was least interested in and de-emphasized those aspects I was most interested in, and that is a great shame.
September 15, 2017
In my former music major opinion, this is an excellent resource for beginning when his research if interested in handling his work. The only thing that really surprised me in this book was that the Nazis wanted to rewrite of the text of Messiah. But I shouldn't be surprised but I thought that was a very interesting piece of information to put into this book. I consulted the bibliography for additional reading since I am fascinated by the oratorio itself. It is a great place to start. I recommend it. The book covers the different periods in his life as a composer and does not give any specific musical composition over zealous treatment. The bibliography is very good so if you are interested in a specific piece of music this would be a great place to find a book on it.
January 5, 2021
Handel's music has always touched me, yet not so this book. '... entertaining portrait of the developing character and career of Handel...' it says on the back, but focused on quotes from contemporary letters, comments and reports, I found it as dry as old bones, in the way academic studies too often are. Any traction gained with the narrative is endlessly interrupted by press notices, architect's bills and the like, which I found frustrating and tedious. Maybe a BBC documentary on Handel's life is more appropriate for me. If you're not afraid of academic research, which here cannot be faulted, and have more of a head for a picture of 'posh' early 18th century society, you'll doubtless get more from this.
May 21, 2022
It's impossible not to compare this to the Gardiner book on Bach: although this is the older of the two, it's the one I read later. Hogwood seems much less interested in talking about his personal connection to Handel and takes a more objective approach to his writing, which is interesting but ultimately makes the book feel a bit dry. The ending chapter about the evolution of Handel's legacy after his death was a great addition, possibly my favorite part.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 25, 2018
A useful summary of Handel's life and works, with special emphasis on the works. Hogwood's writing is a bit dry, but he was a fine conductor and musician more than a historian. Of particular interest to me was Handel's interactions with other composers of the period, and the reception, both positive and negative, to his works when first introduced.
September 19, 2020
It wasn't quite what I was hoping for. It was less of a biography (I don't feel like I know any more than I already did about Handel as a person) and more a chronology of his compositions and how they were received.
Good information though. The book was well researched and I enjoyed the many quotes from contemporary sources. (The best parts were the quotes from Handel's own letters)
Good information though. The book was well researched and I enjoyed the many quotes from contemporary sources. (The best parts were the quotes from Handel's own letters)
January 5, 2022
Very musically technical. Made for a hard read
June 21, 2015
Uma biografia muito interessante e detalhada sobretudo no que se refere à carreira do compositor. Dá algum destaque à sobrevivência da obra de Handel após a sua morte, bem como à recepção das suas obras no Século XX, a redescoberta, as encenações das suas operas e oratórios e a sua publicação em suporte digital.
biographies
October 12, 2013(auf deutsch gelesen)
November 27, 2017
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14820141
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14820141
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March 17, 2019Very thorough!
If you're looking for an in-depth view of Handel's life and work this is ideal. If you're looking for a shorter overview, this might be better:
https://www.janeausten.co.uk/george-f...
If you're looking for an in-depth view of Handel's life and work this is ideal. If you're looking for a shorter overview, this might be better:
https://www.janeausten.co.uk/george-f...
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews