George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel

Handels long career resembles a gigantic tapestry, so bewilderingly crowded with detail, so filled with turmoil and vicissitude, with vast achievements, extremes of good and ill fortune, and unending comings and goings that any attempt to force even a small part of it into the frame of a tiny, unpretentious booklet of the present sort is as hopeless as it is presumptuous. Handel is far more difficult to reduce to such minuscule dimensions than his greatest contemporary, Bach, whose worldly experiences were infinitely less diverse and colorful, for all the sublimity, mystical quality and epochal influence of his myriad creations. The supreme master of florid pomp, Handel bulked much larger in the perspective of his own day than did, in his, the composer of the Passion According to St. Matthew. In spite of an everlasting monument like Messiah, the most popular choral masterpiece ever written, we may, however, ask ourselves if the body of Handels music is as widely known and as intimately studied as it deserves to be. How many today can boast of a real acquaintance with Handels operas (there are more than forty of them alone) apart from a few airs sung in concert; how many can truly claim to know by experience any of the great oratorios apart from Messiah and, possibly, Judas Maccabaeus and Israel in Egypt? Yet outside of such monumental works, Handel was time and again a composer of exquisitely delicate colorations, and sensuous style, not to say a largely unsuspected master of many subtle intricacies of rhythm. The present pamphlet, wholly without originality or novelty of approach, may, perchance, induce the casual reader to renew his interest in Handels prodigious treasury, so much of it neglected, not to say actually undiscovered by multitudes of music lovers. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 49226
Author: Peyser, Herbert F. (Herbert Francis)
Release Date: Jun 17, 2015
Format: eBook
Language: English