With this volume, Howard Smither completes his monumental History of the Oratorio. Volumes 1 and 2, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1977, treated the oratorio in the Baroque era, while Volume 3, published in 1987, explored th

Combining the insights of present-day biblical studies with those of Handelian studies, this book examines the libretti of ten of Handel's Israelite oratorios and evaluates the relationship between each libretto and the biblical story on which it is based.

The Performed Bible is an in-depth study of the librettos and music of 12 operas and oratorios on the story of Ruth from the last two centuries, establishing the potential of music, as a kind of midrash, for transforming a Bible text, its narrative and its characterization. The book includes detailed analyses of musical segments, the author being a cantor and professional musician in whose Jewish tradition biblical texts are chanted, not read. --from publisher description.

During the years 1500–1800, European performing arts reveled in a kaleidoscope of Otherness: Middle-Eastern harem women, fortune-telling Spanish 'Gypsies', Incan priests, Barbary pirates, moresca dancers, and more. In this prequel to his 2009 book Musical Exoticism, Ralph P. Locke explores how exotic locales and their inhabitants were characterized in musical genres ranging from instrumental pieces and popular songs to oratorios, ballets, and operas. Locke's study offers new insights into much-loved masterworks by composers such as Cavalli, Lully, Purcell, Rameau, Handel, Vivaldi, Gluck, and Mozart. In these works, evocations of ethnic and cultural Otherness often mingle attraction with envy or fear, and some pieces were understood at the time as commenting on conditions in Europe itself. Locke's accessible study, which includes numerous musical examples and rare illustrations, will be of interest to anyone who is intrigued by the relationship between music and cultural history, and by the challenges of cross-cultural (mis)understanding.

In this wide-r anging and challenging book, Ruth Smith claims that the words to Handel's oratorios reflect the events and ideas of their time and have far greater meaning than has hitherto been realised. She explores eighteenth-century literature, music, aesthetics, politics and religion to reveal Handel's texts as conduits for the thought and sensibility of their time. The book thus enriches our understanding of Handel, his times, and the close relationship between music and its intellectual contexts.