Donald Burrows

Handel is not really the ideal subject for a biography: his professional life was a smooth progression of recognition and effective use of connections, whilst his private life was exceptionally private and free of drama. He never married, doesn’t seem to have had any love affairs we know about, and we know little about his friendships apart from those that centred on music or literature.

In the spirit of the Master Musicians series, Burrows sticks to what we know about the music and show more professional activities and doesn’t get involved in speculations about what Handel might have done in his free time, assuming he ever granted himself any. But he does give us a very clear account of the music he wrote and how it fitted into the life of the times. What seems to emerge is the picture of a supremely competent craftsman who had a fairly sure instinct for what his royal patrons and the theatre-going public wanted to hear. Handel wrote music to make money for himself and his partners, and he clearly didn’t believe in wasting useful musical ideas: if he (or someone else) had already written something that could be adapted to the project he was working on, and it was long enough ago that it would have been forgotten in its previous context, then why waste energy coming up with new tunes?

A very useful, no-frills biography packed with handy reference material, by an author who clearly has a great deal of respect for his subject. show less

3/22/22