George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends by Ellen T. Harris (review)

Ellen Harris’s George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends is not a typical biography. Rather than tracing life experiences and accomplishments in chronological order as most do, the author seeks to reveal aspects of Handel’s private life in a manner similar to how a sculptor makes an image stand out through relief. The relief is created by revealing how Handel is reflected in the surviving documents of his close friends, most notably Mary Delany, James Hunter, Joseph Goupy, Elizabeth Mayne, Ann Donnellan, and Elizabeth Palmer; for many of these people we have far more prolific information about their personal lives and experiences than we do for the composer. Approaching Handel’s life in this way requires a focus on the lives of others more than on Handel’s so that one gains a sense of their perspective, and Harris directs those seeking chronological and comprehensive accounts of Handel’s life to the recently revised biographies by Donald Burrows, Christopher Hogwood, and Jonathan Keates (p. 14).

The author approaches the topic as a series of overlapping essays focused on different sociopolitical elements. “Commerce and Trade” (chap. 4), “Music at Home” (chap. 5), and “Marriage, Wealth, and Social Status” (chap. 6) are typical in this regard, where Handel’s music is discussed in the context of various themes within the chapters. The Royal Academy operas, for example, are included as part of “Commerce and Trade,” reflecting English interest in the East and the business investments of the academy directors (p. 96ff.). Similarly, some of Handel’s chamber music is addressed in “Music at Home,” and the oratorios are mainly considered within the context of “Religion and Charity” (chap. 9) and “Sickness and Death” (chap. 10). The overall layout of Harris’s Handel still follows a general temporal order, with the focus primarily on Handel’s time in London. The young Handel and his time in Italy are discussed in chapter 2, and the following nine chapters begin with London and move inevitably towards the composer’s death (chap. 10) and his legacies (chap. 11).

Harris refers to the book’s organizational structure as a fugue (pp. 11–15), taking the concept literally rather than figuratively, identifying four separate themes that reoccur with increasing frequency through the course of the work: Handel’s life; culture and context of the period; the lives of Handel’s friends and legatees; and (of course) Handel’s music. While calling it a fugue is to some degree a conceit that recognizes one of Handel’s favorite forms, it also appropriately acknowledges that the people, information, and subject matter contained in the various chapters are more than discrete elements, reappearing in various chapters at different times. As Harris states, “Over the course of the book’s fugal structure, and the increasingly active interplay among its four themes … a picture develops of Handel’s growing personal identification with the music he composes” (p. 14). This is not of Handel’s transitory mental or emotional state when composing, of course, but of his ingrained values, attitudes, and beliefs (p. 15).

Handel: A Life with Friends targets a broad readership, with a tone and level of musical description suitable for undergraduates and generalists who may not read music. Harris seeks to capture the vivid impact of Handel’s works through words rather than discussing the music in terms of theoretical construction (p. 14), and does so in a manner occasionally reminiscent of Donald Tovey. Typical in this regard is Harris’s description of Handel’s op. 3, no. 2 concerto, which likens the stepwise ascent of the repeated opening motive to a “giant figure … approaching step by step” (p. 128), and the dramatic description of the title character from the oratorio Esther entering the throne room, where the king “rushes to her side” after she has swooned (p. 274). Given that there are no stage directions for the oratorio (which...