"The transformation of Handel's oratorios from commercial entertainment to national heritage in 18th-century Britain is an extraordinary cultural phenomenon and the earliest of its kind in music history. A genre that was single-handedly established by Handel turned in the space of half-a-century into a musical affirmation of the British people. Describing and evaluating this process forms the subject of the present dissertation. This is the first detailed study of the early reception of Handelian oratorio in Britain. Drawing entirely on primary sources, the dissertation has three objectives: to offer a collection of hitherto unpublished references on Handel and English oratorio; to provide a continuous narrative on the reception of the genre in the 1732-1784 period; and to initiate a critical response to its cultural evolution within this half-a-century. The Narrative part, structured around theatrical seasons, provides a detailed survey of oratorio performances in London, from the première of Esther to the Handel Commemoration Festival. A number of exceptional moments in the history of the genre receive individual discussions in part two as Studies. These culminate in a comprehensive account of factors that facilitated the cultural mutation of the oratorio. The 870-page collection of contemporary sources provides documentary support to the other two parts and supplements Otto Erich Deutsch's documentary biography of the composer from 1955."

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ABSTRACTThis article examines the early writings of one of Handel's English librettists, Newburgh Hamilton. It describes what seems to be Hamilton's first publication, the little-studied Tory satire The Changes (1711), sets it alongside other early publications and biographical details, and reads this material alongside two of Hamilton's librettos for Handel, Alexander's Feast (1736) and Samson (1743). Hamilton's early writings are approached less as contexts for the oratorios than as texts with their own interest, and as intertexts to be set in dialogue with later productions. The article seeks to contribute to debate over the politics of Handel's vocal music, debate provoked not least by the difficulties of defining the sphere and meanings of politics in eighteenth-century culture, and of conceptualizing the collaborative endeavours and multiple sites of composition, patronage, business, performance and reception that make up Handel's oratorios.

English oratorio engendered lasting changes in music history, yet the social context of its genesis remains under-explored. No convincing explanation has been offered for the Oratorio’s revivals as Esther in February-March 1731/2 and the events leading to Handel’s ambitious production two months later are still obscure. Moreover, scholarly emphasis on the textual affinities between the two works threatens to reduce its birth into mere compositional updating. This essay promotes Esther’s cultural autonomy by shifting attention from music text to context, and from composition to reception. It examines the oratorio’s historical milieu and suggests that political and cultural tensions in 1731–32 informed Handel’s molding of a piece of chamber music into a public-oriented genre. It also upgrades the press as a shaping force in the new market of musical products and finds that rhetorical and typographical choices in Esther advertisements encoded ideological tensions between progressive and antiquarian claims on the oratorio.

The genre of oratorio was properly founded in Italy in the mid-16th century by Carissimi and then expanded to Protestant audiences in Germany by composers like Schütz and Bach, and it reached peak commercial success through Handel in England by the mid 18th century. Over this period of time, the musical, theological, and social aspects of oratorio shifted and developed, and they prove that even today, worship style often reflects the culture it exists in.

George Frideric Handel’s English-language works were immensely popular with the eighteenth-century public, and many remain staples of concert repertoire today. Important research exists on the philosophical import of the texts for these works, and on the oratorio-listener as reader, but it focusses on a small part of the composer’s English output, while musico-linguistic analysts have neglected eighteenth-century English music in general. Addressing these understudied areas, the aim of this thesis is two-fold. First, to apply recent models of musico-linguistic analysis to Handel’s English output as a whole, in combination with aesthetic commentary of the period. Secondly, to investigate the dissemination of these libretti as wordbooks without music, published copies independent of musical scores, and other sources offering the text a potential for appreciation parallel to (or separate from) music. When writing texts for Handel, what decisions did poets make regarding verse form, rhyme scheme, and metre? What input did the composer have in this process? How did his music reflect the formal nuances of the finished libretto? Musico-linguistic analysis offers new perspectives on such issues, illuminating the deeply collaborative nature of these works. Furthermore, while Handel’s English word-setting is often criticised for unidiomatic prosody, I explore counterintuitive stressing as a fruitful tension between musical and verbal communication. Handel’s librettists are frequently dismissed as mediocre poets, merely providing frameworks for music. I argue that audiences’ engagement with the published texts of Handel’s English works formed a more integral part of their musical experience than has previously been acknowledged. Through the concept of reader-listenership, I explore the literate nature of eighteenth-century music-consumption, including the reading of a libretto before and during its performance, of stage directions for a music-drama always intended to be unstaged, and of a poetic text whose formal and semantic implications could conflict with those realized in performance.