Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Handel: Messiah
  • Cited by 7
      • Show more authors
      • You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Select format
    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      June 2012
      June 1991
      ISBN:
      9780511620096
      9780521376204
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620096
      Dimensions:
      Weight & Pages:
      Dimensions:
      (216 x 138 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.2kg, 140 Pages
      • Subjects:
      Seventeenth-Century Music, Music, Music: General Interest
      Series:
      Cambridge Music Handbooks
    You may already have access via personal or institutional login
    • Selected: Digital
    Add to cart View cart Buy from Cambridge.org
    Subjects:
    Seventeenth-Century Music, Music, Music: General Interest
    Series:
    Cambridge Music Handbooks
    Information

    Book description

    This new guide to Handel's most celebrated work traces the course of Messiah from Handel's initial musical response to the libretto, through the oratorio's turbulent first years to its eventual popularity with the Foundling Hospital performances. Different chapters consider the varying reception the work received in Dublin and London, the uneasy relationship between the composer and his librettist Charles Jennens and the many changes Messiah underwent through the varying needs and capacities of Handel's performers. As well as tracing the history of the work's development, the book addresses musical and technical issues such as Messiah's place in the oratorio genre, Handel's treatment of structural design, tonal relationships and English word-setting. An edited libretto elucidates the variants between the text that Handel set and the texts of the early printed word-books. Donald Burrows brings many new insights to this fascinating account of one of the favourite works of the concert hall.

    Reviews

    "Handel scholarship has come long way...notably in important articles on "Messiah" and its versions by Donald Burrows published in Music and Letters in 1975 and 1985. (The material has been pulled together admirably in Mr. Burrows's new Cambridge Music handbook on the oratorio.)" New York Times

    "...the music lover who would like to know more about Handel and Messiah will find succinct history of English oratorio, a genre that Handel himself invented under circumstances and for reasons that remain unclear to this day, and a concise survey of the evolution of the genre to 1741 (Ch. 1). ...presents for the first time in English a clear and detailed chronology of the composition and the events leading up to the first performance of Messiah on 13 April, 1742." Charles Michael Carroll, The Eighteenth Century

    Refine List

    Actions for selected content:

    Select all | Deselect all
    • View selected items
    • Export citations
    • Download PDF (zip)
    • Save to Kindle
    • Save to Dropbox
    • Save to Google Drive

    Save Search

    You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

    Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
    Cancel
    ×

    Contents

    Contents

    Metrics

    Altmetric attention score

    Full text views

    Total number of HTML views: 0
    Total number of PDF views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    Book summary page views

    Total views: 0 *
    Loading metrics...

    * Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

    Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

    Accessibility standard: Unknown

    Why this information is here

    This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

    Accessibility Information

    Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.