Handel's Borrowings Research Articles

„Was er angriff, wurde sein eigen“ – Händels Exzerpierpraxis im Horizont der Genieästhetik

AbstractSince Edward Young's Conjectures on Original Composition published in 1759 the concept of original genius has been at the centre of considerations concerning creative processes. And George Frideric Handel's compositions were regarded not only by his contemporaries, but also by subsequent generations as an epitome of the creative power of a sublime artistic personality individualized in every sense. This image of the composer as a musical hero faltered in the course of the 19th century when it became known to what large extent Handel had taken excerpts from other composers’ works and based his own compositions on these borrowings. The argumentative tension resulting from the confrontation between claim of originality and borrowing practice can by retraced in Handel's Wirkungsgeschichte better than in any other reception history of an 18th‐century artist. Moreover it can be shown that scholarly attempts to explain Handel's art of excerption have focused on the paradigm of the original genius until our days: aesthetic contemplation turns into history of humanities. Based on a selection of symptomatic documents the following article will exemplify and discuss these issues finally sketching some consequences for the analysis and interpretation of Handel's borrowing practice against the background of ars excerpendi.

A New Handel Borrowing?

A New Handel Borrowing?

Handel's borrowings and the disputed Gloria

This article re-examines the case, first made by Hans Joachim Marx, for attributing the Gloria, HWV deest, to Handel by focusing on passages it shares with known works by the composer. In his rebuttal of Marx's case, Anthony Hicks concluded that such 'borrowings' proves only that Handel knew the Gloria, but this assumes that Handel's works were written after the Gloria, which was not the case. Beginning with a look at material shared by the Gloria and Handel's Laudate pueri, HWV236, I continue with an examination of this same material in two further works by Handel, his Laudate pueri, HWV237, and Zadok the Priest, HWV258. Based on the chronology of these works and on the material they share, it is likely that Handel did compose the Gloria. However, a larger question looms concerning passages that might be attributed to an individual composer as opposed to anyone working in the same time and place. This article therefore seeks to isolate the individual from the common-coin in late 17th- and early 18th-century Italian style as a means, not only of resolving the authorship of the Gloria, but also of substantiating our sense of what constitutes a musical borrowing.

Recontextualizing Handel's Borrowing

This article concerns the intersection of Handel's borrowing, eighteenth-century theories and practices of artistic imitation, and the concepts of proprietary authorship and intellectual property. The subject of borrowing, which for generations has preoccupied Handel studies, is at once intriguing and discomforting, causing many to wonder why such a talented composer should have needed or bothered to borrow so frequently from others, let alone himself. Yet, one can detect in the tone of this common query the twin beliefs that borrowing is a somewhat suspect activity, and that Handel would not have borrowed in a perfect world. The investigation of Handel's borrowing is, after all, shaped as much by ideology as it is by curiosity. Indeed, the history of the reception of Handel's borrowing reveals a remarkable catalog of assumed motivations. For example, writers from the early nineteenth century up to the present have suggested that Handel borrowed because of illness or because he was morally derelict; that he borrowed in order to salvage imperfect musical ideas, like an alchemist turning lead into gold, or because he was perhaps more of a arranger than a great composer; or, that he borrowed for the sake of expediency, owing to insufficient compositional impetus (the failure of his starter engine, in Winton Dean's memorable formulation), or owing to a deeper poverty of melodic invention. One early twentieth-century scholar, Percy Robinson, even went so far as to deny Handel's borrowing altogether. Handel's borrowing, it seems, needs to be justified, excused, or otherwise explained-and sometimes explained away. The persistence of the borrowing issue begs the question: Why our fascination and preoccupation with Handel's borrowing? The

Recontextualizing Handel's Borrowing

Recontextualizing Handel's Borrowing

Review: Handel's Operas, 1704-1726 by Winton Dean, John Merrill Knapp; Handel Sources: Materials for the Study of Handel's Borrowing by John H. Roberts

Review: Handel's Operas, 1704-1726 by Winton Dean, John Merrill Knapp; Handel Sources: Materials for the Study of Handel's Borrowing by John H. Roberts

Handel Sources: Materials for the Study of Handel's Borrowing

Handel Sources: Materials for the Study of Handel's Borrowing

Handel's Operas

This first of the classic two-volume survey of Handel's operas was first published in 1987 and reissued in a revised paperback edition in 1995. Now it is brought back into print in a year which has seen numerous productions and recordings of the operas and which marks the 250th anniversary of Handel's death. Their revival in the modern theatre - not a single opera was staged or performed anywhere between 1754 and 1920 - has been among the most remarkable phenomena in the history of the art, and is due in no small measure to the painstaking research of Dean and Knapp in volume one, and Dean himself in volume two, published by Boydell in 2006. This first volume devotes a chapter to each of Handel's first seventeen operas, offering a full synopsis and study of the libretto, extensive discussions of the music, a performance history, and a comparison of the different versions of the opera. In addition there are several general chapters on the historical and stylistic context of Handel's operatic career to 1726, and a number of Appendices including a list of performances during Handel's life and the location of librettos, Handel's borrowings, Handel's singers, and modern stage productions up to the end of 1993. WINTON DEAN is a distinguished Handelian scholar and writer on opera. He is a former vice-president of the Georg-Friedrich-Handel Gesellschaft in Halle and a founding Council Member of the Handel Institute in London. JOHN MERRILL KNAPP died in 1993. He was Emeritus Professor of Music, Princeton University and the editor of two volumes of the German edition of Handel's complete works, and author of The Joy of Opera.

Handel's Borrowings

Handel's Borrowings

Handel's Borrowings

Handel's Borrowings

Handel's Borrowings (Concluded)

Handel's Borrowings (Concluded)

Handel's Borrowings (Continued)

Handel's Borrowings (Continued)

Handel's Borrowings

Handel's Borrowings