Mr. Handel and His Friends: Music in the Context of 18th-Century London Life

FAIN: FA-52579-06

Ellen T. Harris
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA 02139-4307)

Very little personal information survives about the life of composer George Frideric Handel, which gap hinders our understanding of the role his music played in London culture beyond its rather narrow place in court and public entertainments. Extensive documentary information on the lives of his closest, but little-known, friends in London, among whom are legatees in his will previously known in the Handel literature only as -shadowy recipients-, illuminates Handel’s own choices concerning investments, marriage and religion and offers a new picture of the composer and his music in the broader context of British mercantile society.

Associated Products

George Frideric Handel: A Life With Friends (Book)
Title: George Frideric Handel: A Life With Friends
Author: Ellen T.Harris
Abstract: An intimate portrait of Handel’s life and inner circle, modeled after one of the composer’s favorite forms: the fugue. During his lifetime, the sounds of Handel’s music reached from court to theater, echoed in cathedrals, and filled crowded taverns, but the man himself—known to most as the composer of Messiah—is a bit of a mystery. Though he took meticulous care of his musical manuscripts and even provided for their preservation on his death, very little of an intimate nature survives. One document—Handel’s will—offers us a narrow window into his personal life. In it, he remembers not only family and close colleagues but also neighborhood friends. In search of the private man behind the public figure, Ellen T. Harris has spent years tracking down the letters, diaries, personal accounts, legal cases, and other documents connected to these bequests. The result is a tightly woven tapestry of London in the first half of the eighteenth century, one that interlaces vibrant descriptions of Handel’s music with stories of loyalty, cunning, and betrayal. With this wholly new approach, Harris has achieved something greater than biography. Layering the interconnecting stories of Handel’s friends like the subjects and countersubjects of a fugue, Harris introduces us to an ambitious, shrewd, generous, brilliant, and flawed man, hiding in full view behind his public persona.
Year: 2014
Primary URL: http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?id=4294981508
Primary URL Description: website of W. W. Norton
Secondary URL: http://americareads.blogspot.com/2015/02/pg-99-ellen-t-harriss-george-frideric.html
Secondary URL Description: Campaign for the American Reader with a link to "The Page 99 Test" blogpost
Publisher: New York: W.W. Norton and Company
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978039308895
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

Prizes

The Nicolas Slonimsky Award
Date: 11/17/2015
Organization: ASCAP
Abstract: An ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for for the Outstanding Musical Biography in the Concert Music Field

Marfield Prize Finalist (1 of 6)
Date: 3/3/2015
Organization: Arts Club of Washington
Abstract: The Marfield Prize, sponsored by the Arts Club of Washington, awards $10,000 to an outstanding nonfiction book about the arts. This annual award is designed to recognize excellence in arts writing for a general audience and is one of the highest monetary awards for a single-author book published in the United States.

---