Handel's Reception and the Rise of Music Historiography in Britain

<a href="https://embed.stanford.edu/iframe/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpurl.stanford.edu%2Ffz350sz6164" class="su-underline">Show Content</a>

Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Handel was the first composer to receive extensive and continuous historiographical attention. The earliest accounts of his life appear in John Mainwaring’s _Memoirs of the life of the late George Frederic Handel_ (1760), John Hawkins’s _A general history of the science and practice of music_ (1776), and Charles Burney’s _An account of the musical performances in commemoration of Handel_ (1785). Turning things around, these inaugural specimens of music historiography in Britain were specifically written to celebrate Handel’s life and achievements. Mainwaring’s biography was a commemorative volume, which also served the publicity needs of the Covent Garden oratorio series after the composer’s death. Hawkins’s _History_ mounted a conscious defense of a music tradition whose culmination was Handel. And the _Account_ of Burney presented a sanitized view of the 1784 Handel Festival as the musical apotheosis of the century. Handel was thus more than the subject of these narratives; he was a motivating factor for the rise of British music historiography. His posthumous image was recorded and manipulated in these early historical accounts, which were instruments of his canonization, positioning his life as an archetype of trial and triumph reflecting aspects of British identity.

Type of resource	text
Publication date	August 21, 2023; 2009

Author	Chrissochoidis, Ilias	https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3292-2953 (unverified)

Use and reproduction: User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND).

Preferred citation: Chrissochoidis, I. (2009). Handel's Reception and the Rise of Music Historiography in Britain. In _Music’s Intellectual History_, ed. Zdravko Blažeković and Barbara Dobbs Mackenzie (New York: Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale, 2009), 387–396. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/fz350sz6164. https://doi.org/10.25740/fz350sz6164.

Ilias Chrissochoidis Collection

Loading usage metrics...