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Handel''s Muse: Patterns of Creation in His Oratorios and Musical Dramas.(Book Review)-

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Handel's Muse: Patterns of Creation in His Oratorios and Musical Dramas, 1743-1751. By David Ross Hurley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. [xviii, 291 p. ISBN 0-198-16396-7. $65.] Music examples, facsimiles, bibliography, index.

The aim of this book is to provide insight into Handel's compositional process. The method is a study of pre-performance revisions made by the composer during the course of composing six mature oratorios. Through detailed analyses of these revisions the author evaluates previous interpretations and formulates interesting new hypotheses concerning the patterns and interrelationships revealed in the composer s creative acts.

Hurley's book is a timely addition to the Handel literature. It complements similar studies of other composers, such as Robert Marshall's investigation into the creative process in Johann Sebastian Bach's cantatas, and also draws upon the work of other Handel scholars, such as Winton Dean on the oratorios, Donald Burrows and Martha Ronish on the autograph sources, and John Roberts on Handel's prodigious borrowings. Moving in new directions in Handel studies, the book joins other similar studies, in particular C. Steven Larue's Handel and His Singers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Hurley explores some of the same kinds of...

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