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Article Excerpt
Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas. By Ellen Harris. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. [xiv, 430 p. ISBN 0-674-00617-8. $39.95.] Music examples, illustrations, index.
The study of Handel changed decisively in 1994 with the publication of Gary C. Thomas's extended essay, " 'Was George Frideric Handel Gay?': On Closet Questions and Cultural Politics" (in Queering the Pitch, ed. Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas [New York: Routledge, 1994], 155--203). Thomas brought the techniques of cultural studies, as well as recent work on sexuality in the eighteenth century, to bear on the phenomenon of Handel. By closely examining the few contemporary statements about Handel's affections and comparing these to what modern biographers had made of them, he was able to show in a particularly pertinent way how the Handel myth operates, and to what purpose. Turning to Handel's material self, rather than relying on the usual anecdotes, he outlined for the first time a believable context--in both Italy and the early English years--in which Handel established his reputation. He ended with an appeal for a new approach to the musical texts as "part of a whole field of social relati ons and discourses...
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