SITE RATING: 10/10
SITE REVIEW:
This 1972 work by Swedish author Jens Peter Larsen remains
the 'go-to' book for scholarly study of Handel's Messiah,
and for a couple of very good reasons: first, it's eminently readable,
with the English translation perfectly capturing the easy,
conversational prose of Larsen's original text; second, it is thorough
- with biographical, musicological, and textual examinations, as well
as a lengthy look at the sources for our modern-day scores.
It's
hard to argue with a book that has come to be regarded as a standard in
its field, Larsen's arguments are so compelling, so clear-eyed, that it
makes reading this book a pleasure. I also appreciate (not
being
an expert in music theory), that the author doesn't bog down his
writing with technical terms; but writes with a smooth layman's voice
that nevertheless doesn't "dumb-down" the discussion, but rather
invites a larger slice of the general audience into the discussion.
Larsen wrote this book after recognizing that Messiah's
origins and purpose had become obscured, and to a degree corrupted in
the generations since its creation. Thus, the purpose of this
book was to strip away decades of misinformation and, in an almost
"Lutheran" act of rebellion, return to the pure, first Messiah
that Handel created. So influential was Larsen's work, that I
strongly suspect that it was the impetus for the later Baroque revival
movement that began in the late 1970s.
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