Mark Morris' l'allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato: A Celebration

by Jeffrey Escoffier (Editor), Wendy Lesser, Matthew Lore

Mark Morris’ 1988 dance, L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, set to music by Handel and poems by John Milton, and inspired by watercolors by William Blake, has been called a work of “utopian grandeur,” “a masterpiece of craft, invention, and feeling,” “in scale and complexity, in a category by itself.” More than 150 photographs capture each of the piece’s 32 interconnected dances and are accompanied by the text of Milton’s interwoven poems, “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso,” to which Handel set the music. Appreciative essays are by New Yorker critic and Morris biographer Joan Acocella, British critic Alastair Macaulay, and Threepenny Review editor Wendy Lesser. “Possibly the most exhaustive examination of a single dance work ever published.”—New York Times “An extraordinarily handsome new book ... A thorough and valuable critique and appreciation of this glorious dance work.”—The New York Observer “A beautiful coffee-table book.... Elegantly photographed, edited, and produced. A treasured gift for a Morris fan.”—Dance Magazine

160 pages, Paperback

First published April 2, 2001

About the author

Jeffrey Escoffier wrote on glbtq history, politics, culture, sexuality, music, and dance. One of the founders of OUT/LOOK: National Lesbian and Gay Quarterly, he published widely. Among his books are American Homo: Community and Perversity and a biography of John Maynard Keynes in the Chelsea House series on the Lives of Notable Gay Men and Lesbians. He co-edited (with Matthew Lore) Mark Morris' L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato: A Celebration and also edited is Sexual Revolution, an anthology of writing on sex from the 1960s and 1970s. In 2009, he published Bigger Than Life: The History of Gay Porn Cinema from Beefcake to Hardcore. He was also on the board of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at The City University of New York.