Handel in London: The Making of a Genius

Description

Handel in London tells the story of a young German composer who in 1712, followed his princely master to London and would remain there for the rest of his life. That master would become King George II and the composer was Georg Friederich Handel. Handel, then still only twenty-seven and largely self-taught, would be at the heart of musical activity in London for the next four decades, composing masterpiece after masterpiece, whether the glorious coronation anthem, Zadok the Priest, operas such as Giulio Cesare, Rinaldo and Alcina or the great oratorios, culminating, of course, in Messiah. Here, Jane Glover, who has conducted Handel's work in opera houses and concert halls throughout the world, draws on her profound understanding of music and musicians to tell Handel's story. It is a story of music-making and musicianship, of practices and practicalities, but also of courts and cabals, of theatrical rivalries and of eighteenth-century society. It is also, of course, the story of some of the most remarkable music ever written, music that has been played and sung, and loved, in this country - and throughout the world - for three hundred years.

In Jane Glover's long and hugely successful career as a conductor, she has been Music Director of the Glyndebourne Touring Opera, Artistic Director of The London Mozart Players, and, since 2002, is Music Director of Chicago's Music of the Baroque. She has conducted all the major symphony and chamber orchestras in Britain, as well as many in the United States of America and across the world. She appears regularly at the BBC Proms and is a regular broadcaster, with highlights including a television series on Mozart. She is also the author of Mozart's Women. She lives in London.

Remarkable ... Glover's command of detail is impressive ... Her beautiful descriptions of Handel's music sent me again and again, in mid-chapter, to my LPs and CDs to play the arias she had just described ... Handel in London is a delight to read, -- Richard Stokes * Financial Times * Written in elegant prose that wears its author's scrupulous scholarship lightly ... Glover deftly weaves musical analysis into her biographical flow. Her greatest achievement, however, is to give life and music a political and social context. -- Richard Morrison * The Times * Beautifully written ... This book's main achievement, though, is to evoke with admirable clarity and sympathy the rich, interdependent symbiosis between Handel, his singers, his audiences, the royal family and the great capital city that housed their life and work. -- Jessica Duchen * Sunday Times * Lively and warm ... It's refreshing to read a chronicle of Handel's years in London written by a renowned conductor and musicologist ... She wants us to love Handel's music as much as she does and she writes convincingly and fully about each work, singling out her favourite arias for mention, but always in a way that's readable by a music-loving lay person. -- Ysenda Maxtone Graham * Country Life * Inspiring and reassuring ... told with fluency * Spectator * Handel's workload leaves one breathless. Reading, in Jane Glover's beautiful prose, about the astonishing succession of masterpieces he composed is almost overwhelming. As is the schedule for the singers and musicians who learned one lengthy opera whilst performing another. I now have a much clearer picture of the man himself as he adapted his operas to suit the singers at his disposal, rewriting arias and nurturing young artists, and of his generosity in all he did for the Foundling Hospital. I'm full of admiration for the subject of the book, as I am for its author. -- Dame Felicity Lott Behind Jane Glover's baton lurks a brilliant explainer in words, as well as music, able to unravel the threads of musical technique, performance history, and social and political events, exploring each before braiding them tightly together to weave a brightly coloured tapestry of Handel, of his music, and of the world about him. Handel in London is an education, and a delight. -- Judith Flanders As an experienced international conduction who once told an interviewer that her ambition was to conduct Handel's entire dramatic oeuvre (has she yet achieved this? I wonder), Jane Glover is ideally placed to show us how these pieces continue to glitter ... [she] turns our gaze towards the creative artist, resilient and inspired, and asks us to listen ever more attentively to his tuneful voice. -- Jonathan Keates * Literary Review * Delightfully readable, informed and enlivened like no other Handel biography by Jane Glover's understanding of a professional music director's life. -- Dr Ruth Smith, author of Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought Jane Glover gives us a welcome portrait of Handel as a hard-working composer and conductor. She makes us feel the bruising schedule he set for himself, and for all who worked with him, from the point of view of a conductor who knows full well what it takes to mount Handel's great opera or oratorios. She details Handel's uncanny ability to choose his singers when given the opportunity, and she illustrates his amazing skill for writing to the strengths of all his singers, while also bringing to life the characters they portrayed. -- Professor Ellen T. Harris How refreshing, to read a book about music written for a music lover and not a musicologist. In clear, lucid, entertaining prose, Jane Glover makes those of us who lack musical literacy better understand and appreciate Handel's divinity. -- Donna Leon Glover's story sweeps us away with her practitioner's musical insights, her attention to historical detail, and her placing of Handel's work in social and political context, which few of his biographers have attempted before. Handel in London is an unputdownable read. -- Hugh Canning * Opera * Glover tells [Handel's] story with easy scholarship, placing Handel in the midst of the city's turbulent social life, beset by aristocratic factions and temperamental prima donnas. Out of this maelstrom, great music flourishes -- Richard Fairman 'Books of the Year' * Financial Times *