Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (Clarendon Paperbacks) - Softcover

"Brings us as near as we are ever likely to get to the last word on the second-largest part of the composer's output....Definitive."--The Guardian "Mr. Dean's book helps us to understand Handel, his age, and ourselves more deeply. It should acquire the status of a classic not only for its impeccable scholarship, but still more for its humane insights."--Wilfred Mellers, The Spectator "His handling of evidence is masterly. Throughout the book the cross-references build up its internal strength and the footnotes often support with wit as well as scholarship the massive progress of the argument...this [is a] lucid, well-documented, humane work of profound learning."--Times Literary Supplement "Brings us as near as we are ever likely to get to the last word on the second-largest part of the composer's output....Definitive."--The Guardian "Mr. Dean's book helps us to understand Handel, his age, and ourselves more deeply. It should acquire the status of a classic not only for its impeccable scholarship, but still more for its humane insights."--Wilfred Mellers, The Spectator "His handling of evidence is masterly. Throughout the book the cross-references build up its internal strength and the footnotes often support with wit as well as scholarship the massive progress of the argument...this [is a] lucid, well-documented, humane work of profound learning."--Times Literary Supplement "Brings us as near as we are ever likely to get to the last word on the second-largest part of the composer's output....Definitive."--The Guardian "Mr. Dean's book helps us to understand Handel, his age, and ourselves more deeply. It should acquire the status of a classic not only for its impeccable scholarship, but still more for its humane insights."--Wilfred Mellers, The Spectator "His handling of evidence is masterly. Throughout the book the cross-references build up its internal strength and the footnotes often support with wit as well as scholarship the massive progress of the argument...this [is a] lucid, well-documented, humane work of profound learning."--Times Literary Supplement "Brings us as near as we are ever likely to get to the last word on the second-largest part of the composer's output....Definitive."--The Guardian "Mr. Dean's book helps us to understand Handel, his age, and ourselves more deeply. It should acquire the status of a classic not only for its impeccable scholarship, but still more for its humane insights."--Wilfred Mellers, The Spectator "His handling of evidence is masterly. Throughout the book the cross-references build up its internal strength and the footnotes often support with wit as well as scholarship the massive progress of the argument...this [is a] lucid, well-documented, humane work of profound learning."--Times Literary Supplement

Winton Dean's masterly and definitive study deals with Handel's eighteen oratorios and masques in dramatic form. These works, which represent the peak of the composer's achievement, are essentially theatrical rather than religious and would undoubtedly have been performed on the stage from the first but for the intervention of the ecclesiastical authorities. At least ten or twelve of them are among the highest achievements of musical drama not only of their time but in any age. One of the most important works of musical scholarship to be published in recent times, this book is now available for the first time in paperback. This book is intended for handelians, musicologists, and students of eighteenth-century music and drama.