Jonathan Keates original biography of Handel was hailed as a masterpiece on its publication in 1985. This fully revised and updated new edition - published to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the composers death - charts in detail Handel's life, from his youth in Germany, through his brilliantly successful Italian sojourn, to the opulence and squalor of Georgian London where he made his permanent home. For over two decades Handel was absorbed in London's heady but precarious operatic world. But even his phenomenal energy and determination could not overcome the public's growing indifference to Italian opera in the 1730s, and he turned finally to oratorio, a genre which he made peculiarly his own and in which he created some of his finest works, such as Saul, Messiah, Belshazzar and Jephtha. Over the last two decades a complete revolution in Handel's status has taken place. He is now seen both as a titanic figure in music, whose compositions have found a permanent place in the international repertoire, and as one of the world's favourite composers, with snatches of his work accompanying weddings, funerals and television commercials the world over. Skillfully interwoven with the account of Handel's life are commentaries on all his major works, as well as many less familiar pieces by this most inventive, expressive and captivating of composers. Handel was an extraordinary genius whose career abounded in reversals that would have crushed anyone with less resilience and will power, and Jonathan Keates writes about his life and work with sympathy and scrutiny.

This anthology represents scholarly literature devoted to Handel over the last few decades, and contains different kinds of studies of the composer's biography, operatic career, singers, librettists, and his relationship with the music of other composers. Case studies range from recent research that transforms our knowledge of large-scale English works to an interdisciplinary exploration of an individual opera aria. Designed to bring easy and convenient access to students, performers and music lovers, the wide-ranging articles are selected by David Vickers (co-editor of the recent Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia) from diverse sources - not only familiar important journals, but also specialist yearbooks, festschrifts, not easily accessible newsletters, conference proceedings and exhibition catalogues. Many of these represent an up-to-date understanding of modern Handel studies, deal with fascinating biographical issues (such as the composer's art collection, his chronic health problems, and the nature of popular anecdotal evidence), and fill gaps in the mainstream Handelian literature.

Conductors John Yaffé and David Daniels have created a one-stop sourcebook for orchestras, opera companies, conductors, and librarians who research and/or prepare programs of vocal excerpts—such as solos, ensembles, and choruses—for concert performance. In this book, readers will find detailed information on a vast repertoire of vocal pieces commonly extracted from operas, operettas, musicals, and oratorios—more than 1,750 excerpts from 450 parent works. Modeled on Daniels’ Orchestral Music, Arias, Ensembles, & Choruses includes basic historical details about each parent work as well as extract titles, subtitles, voice types, keys, durations, locations in the original work (with page numbers in both full scores and piano-vocal scores), and exact instrumentation. It also lists the publishers that make available the orchestral materials for just the excerpt being programmed, independent of the full parent work. Until now, conductors and orchestra librarians commonly had to first leaf through full scores, searching for one elusive three-minute aria after another, only to then consult multiple publishers' catalogues to compile crucial information on all the excerpts proposed for a concert or recording. This book constitutes a single source for finding that information. In many cases, the individual entries include valuable insider information on common performance practice, including start- and stop-points, transpositions, and conventional cuts. Searching for repertoire is made easy with the detailed title index and appendixes devoted to ensemble excerpts, all categorized by personnel (e.g., duets, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets, choruses) and language (Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Russian). This book is the ideal tool for the working conductor and orchestral librarian, as well as music program directors at colleges and conservatories, opera companies, and symphony orchestras. As of October 2015, a new printing of this book has occurred to correct errors in the index. A PDF version of the new index is available to previous purchasers of the volume. Please contact Rowman & Littlefield's music editor for assistance.

As the last Stuart monarch, Queen Anne (1665-1714) received the education thought proper for a princess, reading plays and poetry in English and French while learning dancing, singing, acting, drawing, and instrumental music. As an adult, she played the guitar and the harpsichord, danced regularly, and took a connoisseur's interest in all the arts. In this comprehensive interdisciplinary biography, James Winn tells the story of Anne's life in new breadth and detail, and in unprecedented cultural context. Winn shows how poets, painters, and musicians used the works they made for Anne to send overt and covert political messages to the queen, the court, the church, and Parliament. Their works also illustrate the pathos of Anne's personal life: the loss of her mother when she was six, her troubled relations with her father and her sister (James II and Mary II), and her own doomed efforts to produce an heir. Her eighteen pregnancies produced only one child who lived past infancy; his death at the age of eleven, mourned by poets, was a blow from which Anne never fully recovered. Her close friendship with Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, a topic of scabrous ballads and fictions, ended in bitter discord; the death of her husband in 1708 left her emotionally isolated; and the wrangling among her chief ministers hastened her death. Richly illustrated with visual and musical examples, Queen Anne draws on works by a wide array of artists-among them the composer George Frideric Handel, the poet Alexander Pope, the painter Godfrey Kneller, and the architect Christopher Wren-to shed new light on Anne's life and reign. This is the definitive biography of Queen Anne.

Written by an eminent scholar in a style that represents American musicological writing at its communicative best, A History of the Oratorio offers a synthesis and critical appraisal so exhaustive and reliable that the serious student of the oratorio will be compelled to look to these volumes as an indispensable source. No work on the history of the oratorio has yet appeared in the English language that is comparable in scope and treatment with Howard Smither's comprehensive four-volume work. The first part of volume 2 examines in depth the antecedents and origins of the oratorio in Protestant Germany in the seventeenth century. It includes discussions of the Lutheran Historia, sacred dramatic dialogues, and the Lubeck Abendmusiken of Buxtehude. The second part treats the oratorio in Protestant Germany in the early eighteenth century and examines Handel, Reinhard Keiser, and J.S. Bach. The third part considers primarily the English oratorios of Handel. In most sections of A History of the Oratorio, the author has selected for special attention a few oratorios that are representative of each geographical area and period. An exception to this procedure is in the section on Handel in this volume, where all of the composer's English oratorios are treated fully with particular reference to recent specialized Handel studies. Volume 1, The Oratorio in the Baroque Era: Italy, Vienna, Paris, and Volume 3, The Oratorio in the classical Era, expand and continue the study of oratorio history. Although this series was originally announced as a three-volume study, Smither will conclude with a fourth volume. Originally published in 1977. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.