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The Faber Pocket Guide to Handel
Handel's reputation has been less than steady since his death in 1759. This pocket guide features: Handel's life: year by year; Handel's operas: a complete guide; essential Handel; picturing Handel; Handel on CD and DVD; and, Handel online. It assesses how Handel's works have stood the test of time and why they can still speak thrillingly to us.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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April 7, 2025
For a pocket guide, this is not particularly user-friendly or pocket-sized.
The information is oddly stratified, making it so one needs to know a fair bit about what you're looking up in order to find out anything about it. Further, not only is the book overly-long, but much at that is caused by the continual chunking of direct quotes from 18th century Handel biographies. Instead of summarizing and synthesizing the significant text insertions by contemporaries like Charles Burney and John Mainwaring, we get the ponderous, purple-prosed paragraphs by these Georgian writers entirely devoid of interpretation or impact. We even get an entire chapter quoting chronological letters by "Mrs Delaney," who gave lots of dinner parties in Handel's honor, and that chapter exists...because those letters exist? Not sure what I was meant to take away.
Published in 2009, this pocket guide was also still within the time frame when books would publish information about information to locate on the internet, a practice that was as instantly unhelpful then as it is now. The publication year coincides with the 250th anniversary of Handel's death, so the timing makes sense, but it also means it came out before a ton of excellent Handel revivals and recordings began to proliferate, so the recordings recommendations feel equally out of date.
I will still use this as a resource to look up info about the Handel I'm already listening to, but it wasn't a great introduction to new things to explore or to the composer's life. But as a memento from the Handel House on Brook Street, it's nice to have on my shelf.
The information is oddly stratified, making it so one needs to know a fair bit about what you're looking up in order to find out anything about it. Further, not only is the book overly-long, but much at that is caused by the continual chunking of direct quotes from 18th century Handel biographies. Instead of summarizing and synthesizing the significant text insertions by contemporaries like Charles Burney and John Mainwaring, we get the ponderous, purple-prosed paragraphs by these Georgian writers entirely devoid of interpretation or impact. We even get an entire chapter quoting chronological letters by "Mrs Delaney," who gave lots of dinner parties in Handel's honor, and that chapter exists...because those letters exist? Not sure what I was meant to take away.
Published in 2009, this pocket guide was also still within the time frame when books would publish information about information to locate on the internet, a practice that was as instantly unhelpful then as it is now. The publication year coincides with the 250th anniversary of Handel's death, so the timing makes sense, but it also means it came out before a ton of excellent Handel revivals and recordings began to proliferate, so the recordings recommendations feel equally out of date.
I will still use this as a resource to look up info about the Handel I'm already listening to, but it wasn't a great introduction to new things to explore or to the composer's life. But as a memento from the Handel House on Brook Street, it's nice to have on my shelf.
Displaying 1 of 1 review