Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas

Handel wrote over 100 cantatas, compositions for voice and instruments that describe the joy and pain of love. In Handel as Orpheus, the first comprehensive study of the cantatas, Ellen Harris investigates their place in Handel's life as well as their extraordinary beauty.

The cantatas were written between 1706 and 1723—from the time Handel left his home in Germany, through the years he spent in Florence and Rome, and into the early part of his London career. In this period he lived as a gue...