Volume 32, Number 20 · December 19, 1985
A Handle on Handel
By Winton Dean
Handel
by Christopher Hogwood
Thames and Hudson, 312 pp., $19.95
Handel and his World
by H.C. Robbins Landon
Little, Brown, 256 pp., $29.95
Handel: The Man and his Music
by Jonathan Keates
St. Martin's, 346 pp., $19.95
Essays on Handel and Italian Opera
by Reinhard Strohm
Cambridge University Press, 303 pp., $49.50
Major anniversaries of great composers are apt to agitate the pens of journalists, critics, and musicologists, often with disappointing results. Occasionally we are confronted with an important study, which has of necessity been planned long in advance. More frequently an author, stimulated perhaps by a publisher with an eye for the main chance, puts together a work based on long-known facts and anecdotes, seasoned with such fruits of recent scholarship as he has been able to gather and adorned with lavish illustrations. In any event the anniversary is likely to do part of the publisher's work and sell more copies than would be the case in an uncanonical year, since the composer's music will be thrust constantly before the public in festivals, concerts, radio performances, and recordings, and if his life yields enough edifying or scandalous material, television is unlikely to miss its opportunity.
Review, 3947 words
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