Title: Münzen und Medaillen
Description: Important new discoveries about Handel's life--about his travels, the composition and performance of his major works, his business dealings, his relationships with friends, patrons, and colleagues--have been made by scholars since the first edition of this well-known biography was published. In this much-revised edition, issued as part of the world-wide commemoration of the bicentenary of Handel's death, the author has incorporated the most revealing of his new material in a complete, entertaining biography addressed to the general reader. This book tells the story of a colossally great musician--"one of the most majestic, tender, and human voices ever lifted in praise of life, of love, of beauty, and of the art of music." Over and above that full-length portrait, it presents the story of a whole man, presenting him through the decades of his long life in all his overpowering vitality and tenacity, his superhuman productivity, his wild outbursts of wit, his sometimes shrewdly tactical rages, his charities, his relationships with the great, the near-great, the eccentric, the humble, and the talented. To tell Handel's story adequately means surveying the evolution of opera from its beginnings to his time, chronicling the invention of the Handel oratorio as a British national institution, and writing the significant chapter of social history that begins with the professional musician as a kept prisoner and ends with his attainment of self-support and economic self-respect. The author also gives entertaining vignettes of eighteenth-century Germany, Italy, London, and Dublin (where Messiah was first sung), together with miniature essays on aspects of the musical life (the male sopranos and contraltos, for example) musical plagiarism in Handel's day, and the involvements of music with politics) and succinct, deft portraits of singers, impresarios, rival musicians, critics, pamphleteers, politicians, men of letters, princes, queens, and kings. All known letters of Handel, as also his will and its codicils, are incorporated in either text or appendix.

For other editions, see Author Catalog.
Subjects: German Coins, Catalogs, German Medals, Numismatics, Composers
Places: Germany