Handel in London

Starred review from October 15, 2018
How and why the young German musical genius moved to London, where his budding talent blossomed.Glover (Mozart's Women: His Family, His Friends, His Music, 2006) is a celebrated veteran conductor (the London Mozart Players and others) and musical authority who has more than 40 years of experience as a musician. She brings all her knowledge and experience to bear in this thorough and revealing work about the prolific and prodigious George Frideric Handel (1685-1759). The author's approach is steadfastly chronological: She begins with Handel's birth family (his father was a barber-surgeon) and then advances steadily toward his blindness and death. Although Glover focuses on the composer's life and music, she devotes large portions of the narrative to the royal politics of his time--Handel was an intimate at the court of George I and II; members of the royal family routinely attended performances of his works and supported him financially--and she keeps us apprised throughout of the cultural and social affairs of the English. Although the author writes for a general readership, she does explore many of his major works--operas, oratorios, occasional music--in considerable detail, explorations that will resonate most clearly with musically sophisticated readers. She also assesses Handel's personality--his temper, his ferocious work ethic--and his personal life, though there is not much about his love life (he never married). Glover also shows us a prescient, adaptable Handel, an artist sensitive to shifting times and interests. When Londoners' interest in the Italian opera waned, he turned to oratorios sometimes based on the works of notable English poets, including Dryden Milton. Messiah also gets its due, and the author informs us that there is no evidence for the legend about the king's standing during "Hallelujah." Near the end she includes a touching scene: Handel visiting the declining Jonathan Swift.Lush and illuminating--a lovely structure built on a solid foundation of research, expertise, and affection.

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November 1, 2018

George Friderich Handel (1685{amp}ndash;1750) is one of the great composers of the baroque style, though he is sometimes overshadowed by his contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach. If for nothing else, Handel will always be famous for his ever-popular oratorio Messiah. Yet he also wrote numerous operas, other oratorios, and instrumental pieces. Conductor, musical director, and author Glover (Mozart's Women) concentrates here on German-born Handel's time in London, where he lived from 1712 until his death. One of the most intriguing aspects of this biography is Handel's relations with members of the British monarchy, who offered continuing financial support for his musical aspirations. Another strength is its description of the cultural and political setting in which Handel worked. Remarkably, there is hardly a mention of Handel's personal life, for instance, his attitude toward women or religion. Moreover, there is no commentary on Handel's opinion of the work of other composers, though Bach is noted in passing. Numerous usually Italian arias from Handel's operas are cited in the text but rarely translated. VERDICT Recommended for readers who wish to know more about Handel as an empresario for his own works.{amp}mdash;Edward B. Cone, New York

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 2018
Conductor and music scholar Glover is among those most responsible for the performance revival of Germany's greatest artistic gift to England. She crowns her labors with a biography of such gusto and brilliance that it is as pleasurable as informative. As the title suggests, it's partial, but the part is large. Handel arrived in London in 1710, the year he became kapellmeister to the elector of Hanover and turned England's capital on its ear with his Italian-language opera Rinaldo. He just about never went home again. From 1710 to a few years short of his death, in 1759, he was a fountain of exuberant operas in Italian and, when the fashion for that genre declined, oratorios in English. His work involved not only composition but also selecting dramatic subjects; collaborating with librettists; contracting performance spaces; and securing the services of and sometimes training musicians, solo singers, and choruses. Glover illuminates every aspect of Handel's work and describes the plots and musical distinctions of most of the operas and oratorios so fetchingly that the reader itches to hear and see them. She also brings Handel's times and most constant collaborators, sponsors, and antagonists to vivid life as she keeps the rather-elusive maestro, who wrote almost nothing about himself, firmly in focus.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)