Music in the London Theatre from Purcell to Handel

Description

This book is concerned with a hundred years of musical drama in England. It charts the development of the genre from the theatre works of Henry Purcell (and his contemporaries) to the dramatic oratorios of George Frideric Handel (and his). En route it investigates the objections to all-sung drama in English that were articulated in the decades around 1700, various proposed solutions, the importation of Italian opera, and the creation of the dramatic oratorio - English drama, all-sung but not staged. Most of the constituent essays take an in-depth look at a particular aspect of the process, while others draw attention to dramatic qualities in non-dramatic works that also were performed in the theatre. The journey from Purcell to Handel illustrates the vigour and vitality of English theatrical and musical traditions, and Handel's dramatic oratorios and other settings of English words answer questions posed before he was born.

Colin Timms is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham, where he held the Peyton and Barber chair from 1992 to 2012. He is also a trustee of the Gerald Coke Handel Foundation and of the Handel Institute, whose Newsletter he edits, and honorary president of the Forum Agostino Steffani. He has published extensively on Steffani, and his book Polymath of the Baroque: Agostino Steffani and his Music (2013) won a British Academy prize. In addition to works by Steffani and Stradella, he has edited Theodora for the Hallische Handel-Ausgabe and Handel's Comus for Novello. Bruce Wood is Emeritus Professor of Music at Bangor University, and Chairman of the Purcell Society. He is the author of the most recent biography of Purcell (Purcell: An Extraordinary Life, 2009) and editor or co-editor of more than a dozen volumes of music by Purcell and Blow in the Purcell Society Edition and in Musica Britannica.

'The volume is well edited and clearly and attractively laid out, with footnotes, some of them quite extensive, conveniently presented on the page to which they refer. There are a few musical examples; a bibliography and an index are provided. This excellent collection of papers will be of value to anyone interested in English baroque music and its literary and theatrical connections.' Robert Manning, The Consort Early Music Journal 'This volume of traditional musicology is well wrought, meets the editors' goal of redefining the idea of 'theatre music', and provides, both deliberately and inadvertently, plenty of food for thought.' David Hunter, Notes