Mendelssohn

by Radcliffe, Philip; Jones, Peter Ward

• ISBN13: 9780198164937
• ISBN10: 0198164939
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-02-22
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Celebrating its 100th anniversary, this extraordinary series continues to amaze and captivate its readers with detailed insight into the lives and work of music's geniuses. Unlike other composer biographies that focus narrowly on the music, this series explores the personal history of each composer and the social context surrounding the music. In a precise, engaging, and authoritative manner, each volume combines a vivid portrait of the master musicians' inspirations, influences, life experiences, even their weaknesses, with an accessible discussion of their work-all in roughly 300 pages. Further, each volume offers superb reference material, including a detailed life and times chronology, a complete list of works, a personalia glossary highlighting the important people in the composer's life, and a select bibliography. Under the supervision of music expert and series general editor Stanley Sadie, Master Musicians will certainly proceed to delight music scholars, serious musicians, and all music lovers for another hundred years. In this volume, Donald Burrows's relates Handel's life and his music, devoting particular attention to two crucial junctures in Handel's development: his transition from a church-trained musician in Germany to a successful opera composer in London, and the gradual transformation of his theater career from opera to oratorio, some thirty years later. In the oratorio form, as Burrows demonstrates, Handel was able to combine the techniques of large-scale construction and of aria writing that he had developed in his operas with an experience of choral music that went back to his earliest training as a church organist. The result was music that succeeds to this day in capturing the imagination of a vast audience.

Author Biography

Philip Radcliffe, who died in 1986, was a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Preface to the 1990 edition	xi
Illustrations	xv
1809--24	1	(8)
1825--30	9	(9)
1831--3	18	(9)
1834--7	27	(8)
1838--44	35	(10)
1845--7	45	(7)
Personality and influence	52	(11)
Piano and organ works	63	(13)
Chamber music	76	(14)
Symphonies	90	(9)
Works for a solo instrument with orchestra	99	(5)
Overtures and other orchestral works	104	(4)
Songs, duets and partsongs	108	(5)
Oratorios	113	(12)
Other choral works	125	(7)
Music for the stage	132	(5)
General characteristics	137	(40)
Appendices
A Calendar	148	(8)
B Catalogue of works	156	(14)
C Personalia	170	(3)
D Select bibliography	173	(4)
Index	177