Handel's Messiah: A New View of Its Musical and Spiritual Architecture-Study Guide for Listeners and Performers

We think we know Handel's Messiah, having heard it or performed it so many times. But is there another way to look at this masterpiece? Who assembled the texts? Why? How did Handel incorporate his own spiritual understanding of the texts? In this treatise, we view the composition from the same Baroque aesthetic perspective the composer used: the Doctrine of Affections--an approach heretofore unexplored in relationship to Handel's Messiah--which held that every major and minor key prompted a...