An international collaboration between leading scholars showcases a broad spectrum of observations on Handel and his music, covering many aspects of modern interdisciplinary and traditional philological musicology.

This book establishes the cultural background to the productions of Milton’s Comus that were staged in the 1740s by Baptist Noel, 4th Earl of Gainsborough, at Exton Hall, his country seat in the East Midlands of England. The author reveals that Handel’s visit in 1745 occurred in a richer and fuller context of cultural interests among the Noel family. Most of the music at Exton was selected from existing works by Handel, but the four movements of the finale were new, written by the composer specifically for the occasion. The study is based on receipted bills and other documents in an archival collection of Noel family papers that provide evidence of the Earl’s purchase of books and music and of the musical and theatrical activities undertaken on his Exton estate. The author discusses the Earl’s interests in music, books and theatre, indicating a belief in performance as a valuable and enjoyable experience and as a vehicle for the education of the young. In addition to creating a context for Comus, this book sheds light on cultural life in a mid-eighteenth-century English country house and how the Earl’s productions made a significant contribution to the cultural life of the East Midlands. The book will be of great value to cultural musicologists, historians and Handelians, as the documentation sheds a huge amount of light on a variety of cultural practices in eighteenth-century England.

Building upon the developing picture of the importance of British music, musicians and institutions during the eighteenth century, this book investigates the themes of composition, performance (amateur and professional) and music-printing, within the wider context of social, religious and secular institutions. British music in the era from the death of Henry Purcell to the so-called 'Musical Renaissance' of the late nineteenth century was once considered barren. This view has been overturned in recent years through a better-informed historical perspective, able to recognise that all kinds of British musical institutions continued to flourish, and not only in London. The publication, performance and recording of music by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British composers, supplemented by critical source-studies and scholarly editions, shows forms of music that developed in parallel with those of Britain's near neighbours. Indigenous musicians mingled with migrant musicians from elsewhere, yet there remained strands of British musical culture that had no continental equivalent. Music, vocal and instrumental, sacred and secular, flourished continuously throughout the Stuart and Hanoverian monarchies. Composers such as Eccles, Boyce, Greene, Croft, Arne and Hayes were not wholly overshadowed by European imports such as Handel and J. C. Bach. The present volume builds on this developing picture of the importance of British music, musicians and institutions during the period. Leading musicologists investigate themes such as composition, performance (amateur and professional), and music-printing, within the wider context of social, religious and secular institutions.

Reveals how the musical benefit allowed musicians, composers, and audiences to engage in new professional, financial, and artistic contexts.

From New York Times bestselling historian and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Charles King, the moving untold story of the eighteenth-century men and women behind the making of Handel’s Messiah George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is arguably the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. Adored by millions, it is performed each year by renowned choirs and orchestras, as well as by audiences singing along with the words on their cell phones. But this work of triumphant joy was born in a worried age. Britain in the early Enlightenment was a time of astonishing creativity but also of war, enslavement, and conflicts over everything from the legitimacy of government to the meaning of truth. Against this turbulent background, prize-winning author Charles King has crafted a cinematic drama of the troubled lives that shaped a masterpiece of hope. Every Valley presents a depressive dissenter stirred to action by an ancient prophecy; an actress plagued by an abusive husband and public scorn; an Atlantic sea captain and penniless philanthropist; and an African Muslim man held captive in the American colonies and hatching a dangerous plan for getting back home. At center stage is Handel himself, composer to kings but, at midlife, in ill health and straining to keep an audience’s attention. Set amid royal intrigue, theater scandals, and political conspiracy, Every Valley is entertaining, inspiring, unforgettable.

Building on the insights of the first volume on Music and Gesture (Gritten and King, Ashgate 2006), the rationale for this sequel volume is twofold: first, to clarify the way in which the subject is continuing to take shape by highlighting both central and developing trends, as well as popular and less frequent areas of investigation; second, to provide alternative and complementary insights into the particular areas of the subject articulated in the first volume. The thirteen chapters are structured in a broad narrative trajectory moving from theory to practice, embracing Western and non-Western practices, real and virtual gestures, live and recorded performances, physical and acoustic gestures, visual and auditory perception, among other themes of topical interest. The main areas of enquiry include psychobiology; perception and cognition; philosophy and semiotics; conducting; ensemble work and solo piano playing. The volume is intended to promote and stimulate further research in Musical Gesture Studies.

Over the past two centuries Western culture has largely valorized a particular kind of “good” music—highly serious, wondrously deep, stylistically authentic, heroically created, and strikingly original—and, at the same time, has marginalized music that does not live up to those ideals. In Good Music, John J. Sheinbaum explores these traditional models for valuing music. By engaging examples such as Handel oratorios, Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, jazz improvisations, Bruce Springsteen, and prog rock, he argues that metaphors of perfection do justice to neither the perceived strengths nor the assumed weaknesses of the music in question. Instead, he proposes an alternative model of appreciation where abstract notions of virtue need not dictate our understanding. Good music can, with pride, be playful rather than serious, diverse rather than unified, engaging to both body and mind, in dialogue with manifold styles and genres, and collaborative to the core. We can widen the scope of what music we value and reconsider the conventional rituals surrounding it, while retaining the joys of making music, listening closely, and caring passionately.