Handel wrote over 100 cantatas, compositions for voice and instruments that describe the joy and pain of love. In Handel as Orpheus, the first comprehensive study of the cantatas, Ellen Harris investigates their place in Handel's life as well as their extraordinary beauty.
The cantatas were written between 1706 and 1723--from the time Handel left his home in Germany, through the years he spent in Florence and Rome, and into the early part of his London career. In this period he lived as a guest in aristocratic homes, and composed these chamber works for his patrons and hosts, primarily for private entertainments. In both Italy and England his patrons moved in circles in which same-sex desire was commonplace--a fact that is not without significance, Harris reveals, for the cantatas exhibit a clear homosexual subtext.
Addressing questions about style and form, dating, the relation of music to text, rhythmic and tonal devices, and voicing, Handel as Orpheus is an invaluable resource for the study and enjoyment of the cantatas, which have too long been neglected. This innovative study brings greater understanding of Handel, especially his development as a composer, and new insight into the role of sexuality in artistic expression.
By:
Ellen T. Harris
Imprint: Harvard Uni.Press Academi
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: New edition
Dimensions:
Height: 246mm,
Width: 162mm,
Spine: 29mm
Weight: 728g
ISBN: 9780674015982
ISBN 10: 0674015983
Pages: 448
Publication Date: 30 September 2004
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
* Acknowledgments * Note on the Musical Examples * Prologue: The Ways of the World *1. Code Names and Assumed Identities *2. Women's Voices/Men's Voices *3. Pastoral Lovers *4. Cantata Couples and Love Triangles *5. Silence and Secrecy *6. Culmination of the Private * Epilogue: True Representation * Appendix 1: Cantata Chronology * Appendix 2: Texts and Translations of the Continuo Cantatas * Bibliographic Abbreviations * Notes * Title Index of Handel's Cantatas, Duets, and Trios * General Index
Ellen Harris is Class of 1949 Professor and Head of Music and Theater Arts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Reviews for Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas
A comfortingly humane work of scholarship. The topic of Handel's sexuality--very much germane to the Italian cantatas that are Ms. Harris's principle concern--is addressed with candor and sympathy. We come closer to the composer, partly by feeling the shape of doubt.--Paul Griffiths New York Times
- Nominated for PROSE Awards 2002
- Nominated for Roland H. Bainton Book Prize 2002
- Winner of American Society for 18th-Century Studies Louis Gotschalk Prize 2003
