BOOKS |
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TITLE: |
HANDEL'S
MESSIAH:
A CELEBRATION |
AUTHOR: |
RICHARD
LUCKETT |
PUBLISHER: |
HARCOURT
BRACE & COMPANY |
ISBN
(HARDCOVER): |
0151384372 |
ISBN (PAPERBACK): |
0156001381 |
UPC/EAN: |
9780151384372 |
LCCN: |
ML410.H13L8;
93-22069 |
YEAR: |
1992 |
SERIES: |
N/A |
PAGES: |
258
P. |
PUB.
LOCATION: |
GREAT
BRITAIN |
DDC: |
782.23 |
EXCERPT: |
CLICK HERE
FOR SAMPLE PAGE (.PDF) |
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DESCRIPTION:
Richard Luckett, librarian at Magdalene
College, Cambridge, and an acknowledged
authority on seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century music, explores the
background and composition of Messiah; the
often stormy relations between Handel and his
librettist, Charles Jennens; the colorful
lives and personalities of the original
soloists; and the circumstances of the first
performances in Dublin, 1742, at which ladies
were asked not to wear hoops or gentlemen
their swords, so there would be more room.
Luckett also gives the complex
subsequent history of the work - its success
in small town and among humble people, its
grand Victorian spectacle in Westminster
Abbey, with thousands on stage and tens of
thousands in the audience, and its
"restoration" in the twentieth century.
Paintings, engravings, caricatures, and
facsimiles of Handel's autograph score
illustrate a text written with erudition and
wit. Handel's
Messiah: A Celebration is a
fascinating account of a great and beloved
work of music. |
SITE RATING: 5/10
SITE
REVIEW: I wish that I
enjoyed this book more - it's chock-full of
information, it's highly literate, and the
author, Richard Luckett, has obviously put a
lot of research into it. But for all the
information and knowledge, Luckett lacks a
writer's felicity with language - his prose is
pedantic and stale, and more often than not,
he sounds like the dustiest college professor
on campus, droning on and on without ever
engaging his students' interest. This
stuffiness begins with the table of contents,
which harnesses the chapters with titles that
seem ripped from the bodices of Elizabethan
drama: "To th' Hibernian Shore", "The Ravished
Ear: The Music of Messiah", "The Benevolent
Design: The Birth of an Institution" - and
"The Universal Song: The Apogee of Messiah"
- none of which whetted my appetite for what
was to follow. The author spends a great
deal of time on each moment of Messiah's
creation - seventeen pages on Jennens's
libretto, twenty-one pages on Handel's music;
a further twenty-one pages on the Dublin
premiere, and so on, but it's such a chore to
wade through, that even a huge admirer of Messiah
like me found myself skipping pages, looking
for something of interest. Luckett's
vast garden of facts and anecdotes withers and
dies under the white glare of his dull,
scholarly writing. In trying to create a
celebration of Messiah, Luckett's roots as a
college librarian unwittingly show themselves;
Handel's
Messiah: A Celebration is like the
whited sepulchre; lovely and elegant on the
outside, but the heart and soul of it
- the written word - is full of dead
men's bones.
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