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| DESCRIPTION: Through two centuries of interpretation and performances by musicians and laymen with widely varying talents and objectives, the true nature of Handel's Messiah has become obscured and distorted. The late Jens Peter Larsen, distinguished musicologist of the University of Copenhagen and a leading musical scholar in the field of eighteenth-century music, presents here the detailed biography of a great work of art. In his book we not only recapture the true form of the work but gain insight into the religious and social ramifications and changing tastes in music which its history reflects. |
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SITE RATING: 10/10 SITE
REVIEW: This 1972 work
by Swedish author Jens Peter Larsen remains
the 'go-to' book for scholarly study of
Handel's Messiah,
and for a couple of very good reasons: first,
it's eminently readable, with the English
translation perfectly capturing the easy,
conversational prose of Larsen's original
text; second, it is thorough - with
biographical, musicological, and textual
examinations, as well as a lengthy look at the
sources for our modern-day scores. It's
hard to argue with a book that has come to be
regarded as a standard in its field, Larsen's
arguments are so compelling, so clear-eyed,
that it makes reading this book a pleasure.
I also appreciate (not being an expert
in music theory), that the author doesn't bog
down his writing with technical terms; but
writes with a smooth layman's voice that
nevertheless doesn't "dumb-down" the
discussion, but rather invites a larger slice
of the general audience into the discussion.
Larsen wrote this book after recognizing
that Messiah's
origins
and purpose had become obscured, and to a
degree corrupted in the generations since its
creation. Thus, the purpose of this book
was to strip away decades of misinformation
and, in an almost "Lutheran" act of rebellion,
return to the pure, first Messiah
that Handel created. So influential was
Larsen's work, that I strongly suspect that it
was the impetus for the later Baroque revival
movement that began in the late 1970s.
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