How have Handel's 'lives' in biographies and histories moulded our
understanding of the musician, the man and the icon? To evaluate
the familiar, even over-familiar, story of Handel's life could be
seen as a quixotic endeavour. How can there be anything new to say?
This book seeks to distinguish fact from fiction, not only to
produce a new biography but also to explore the concepts of
biography and dissemination by using Handel's life and lives as a
case study. By examining the images of Handel to be found in
biographies and music histories - the genius, the religious
profound, the master of musical styles, the distiller into music of
English sentiment, the glorifier of the Hanoverians, the hymner of
the middle class, the independent, the prodigious, the generous,
the sexless, the successful, the wealthy, the bankrupt, the pious,
the crude, the heroic, the devious, the battler of ill-fortune, the
moral exemplar - and by adding new factual information, David
Hunter shows how events are manipulated into stories and tropes.
Onesuch trope has been employed to portray numerous persons as
Handel's enemies regardless of whether Handel considered them as
such. Picking apart the writing of Handel's biographers and other
reporters, Hunter exposes the narrative underpinnings - the lies,
confusions, presumptions, and conclusions, whether direct and
inferred or assumed - to show how Handel's 'lives' in biographies
and histories have moulded our understanding of the musician, the
man andthe icon. DAVID HUNTER is Music Librarian at the University
of Texas at Austin.
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