Handel's Messiah: A Celebration (A Harvest Book) - Softcover

Luckett, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156001381 ISBN 13: 9780156001380

Publisher: Mariner Books, 1995

Synopsis

An authority on eighteenth-century music explores the background and composition of Messiah and gives the complex subsequent history of the work. Paintings, engravings, caricatures, and facsimiles of Handel's autograph score illustrate the text. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

About this title

About the Author:

Dr Richard Luckett graduated from St Catharine's in 1967. He then taught 20th century European history at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst before returning to do a PhD at Cambridge in 1969. In 1970 he became a Research Fellow of St Catharine's (Official Fellow 1972). In 1971 he published THE WHITE GENERALS: AN ACCOUNT OF THE WHITE MOVEMENT AND THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR (2nd edition 1988). In 1972 he received his PhD for 'The Legend of St Cecilia in English Literature' and became a University Assistant Lecturer in English, where he has been Secretary and Chairman of the Degree Committee. In 1978 he became a University Lecturer and moved to Magdalene as Fellow, Keeper of the Old Library and Director of Studies in English, also becoming Precentor in 1982. He has been active in Cambridge music since his time as an undergraduate when he produced Yvonne Minton in Gluck's Orfeo Euridice and Alberto Renedios in Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A joyous but far from superficial paean to Handel's beloved masterwork. Only very occasionally does there appear a book about great music that doesn't wind up somehow diminishing the music itself. This is such a book. Luckett, the librarian at Magdalene College, Cambridge, modestly disclaims breaking any new scholarly ground, but the wealth of erudition that illuminates his description of the backdrop (musical and social), composition, and performance history of Messiah is truly impressive. All the familiar material is here, and a good deal more besides. Even the more quirky references (e.g., Dr. Johnson's patronizing remarks about Dublin, which heard the first performance in 1742) add to the superb texture. And the writing is beyond praise: Describing Handel's retreat from opera to the new form of oratorio, Luckett articulates the difficulties of saying farewell to ``...the irrational element, the pull of opera for its own ephemeral sake, the love affair that persists despite and because of the sweat and the greasepaint, the squalls and squalor, the cliques and cabals, for the sake of that one shudder of the realized dream.'' By the time that the aging, financially beleaguered master combines his earthy sense of rhythm and melody with a lifetime of musical learning to create his immortal treatment of the most sacred of religious subjects, the reader understands what makes ``classical'' music a living as well as lively art. Moreover, Luckett, going past Handel's death, provides a smart, wry history of emendations, ``improvements,'' and performances up almost to our own day. A book worthy of its subject and its subtitle, and one that deserves far more than a specialist readership. A Handelian home run. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0156001381
• ISBN 13: 9780156001380
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256