She spends more time than some biographers on the political and historical context, the house of Hanover having considerable bearing on Handel's career, as did Shakespeare's relationship with the Tudors and Stuarts. It is of interest to those of us who didn't know that the two political parties, The Whigs and The Tories, were derived from Scottish terms of abuse,
whiggamore, meaning 'cattle driver', and torai, 'robber'
Not much changes, does it.
While the royal family remained devoted supporters of Handel in the London opera house rivalries, Jane's most shocking revelation is that there is no evidence that we all stand for the Hallelujah Chorus because the king did. Maybe he just wanted to stretch the royal legs, maybe it didn't happen at all but, still, just because there's no evidence for it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Personally I enjoy it and intend to continue to do so.
Handel's story is firstly that of bringing Italian opera to England, with the concomitant issue, as later in Amadeus, of whether opera should be sung in the vernacular. Well, of course you can if you want but it's Italian, isn't it. The move to oratorio neatly solves that, with his librettists, sorry, text providers, doing so in English. But what Handel also brought to London was star Italian singers - Senesino, Farinelli, the great castrati, as well as soprano superstars- who were offered outrageous contracts in something similar to the way that football clubs now pay nonsensical money to bring talented players in to keep bums on seats. He had it by no means all his own way, with rival companies luring away big names and critics not only alert to when a new work wasn't as good as it might have been or simply, for their own reasons, set against the great man.
Messiah wasn't the immediate hit in London that it had been in Dublin and took time to gather the momentum required to make it the monument it is today. But music is hard to write about and Jane, having described the early big hit, Rinaldo, in superlative terms, can only use up all the thesaurus has to offer when more mature works are considered to achieve greater heights.
As a professional musician, her concerns are also weighted towards how Handel organized his singers, wrote parts for them, adapted works to fit his available talent and although we get a sense of Handel's imperious temperament, as well as being given credit for his charitable, sympathetic side, we might have had a few more anecdotes to establish his larger-than-life personality even if some of those anecdotes are anecdotal.
We are also given plot summaries of the major operas and oratorios, which may or may not pad out the text when anybody with a CD can read the story if they really want to know.
A highlight among the numerous photographs, of places and people, is one of the autograph score of Zadok the Priest, with a circular stain below the parts where Georg had put his drink down after knocking out those opening bars, that I think might have come from an Albinoni Oboe Concerto that Jane doesn't mention. What modern techniques need to work out is whether the mark is coffee, tea, wine or beer. Then we would know.
Not known as self-indulgent, and unlikely to have been since he produced enormous scores in alarmingly short time, Jane can be applauded for not speculating on such issues as our contemporary obsession with a 'private life'. Handel never married, there is no suggestion that he ever entertained the idea or was otherwise inclined. And so be it. If he's happy pouring out the most glorious oeuvre of sublime music, it's a good thing he was left to do so.
It ends in crippling blindness, Jephtha being a hard won last masterpiece, and the funeral being a state occasion for the greatest of Germans who adopted London as his home, for whom England remains very grateful. And we can be grateful to Jane Glover, too, for her highly readable follow up to Mozart's Women, which was many years ago now.
