Handel: The Man & His Music

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Over the last two decades a complete revolution in Handel's status has taken place. He is now seen both as a titanic figure in music, and as one of the world's favorite composers, with snatches of his work accompanying weddings, funerals, and television commercials the world over. Though unquestionably one of the greatest and best-loved of all composers, George Frideric Handel (1685?1759) had received little attention from biographers before Jonathan Keates’s masterful biography appeared in 1985. This fully updated and expanded edition charts in detail Handel’s life, from his youth in Germany, through his brilliantly successful Italian sojourn, to the opulence and squalor of Georgian London. Written with sympathy and penetration about this extraordinary genius, it details Handel's career which abounded in reversals that would have crushed anyone with less resilience and willpower, but his influence was deeply felt by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven.Interwoven with the account of Handel’s life are commentaries on all his major works, as well as many less familiar pieces by this most inventive, expressive, and captivating of composers.

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Jonathan Keates is a biographer and novelist. His other titles include Allegro Postillions, for which he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Purcell, and Stendhal.