Author: HANDEL. [MAINWARING (John)]:
Title: Memoirs of the Life of the late George Frederic Handel. To which is added, A Catalogue of his Works, and Observations upon them.
Description: London: Printed for R. and J. Dodsley..., 1760. FIRST EDITION. 8vo, 210 x 122 mms., pp. [iv], 208, including half-title, engraved portrait of Handel at the age of 56 by T. Chambers as frontispiece, contemporary calf, neatly rebacked, with title blocked in gilt on spine. A very good copy with the book label of Richard Luckett on the front paste-down end-paper and on the top margin of the recto of the front free end-paper, "Alfred C. Every/ 35 Royal Street Kensington/ 23rd Oct. 1857." Mainwaring (1724 - 1807) studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, and was ordained in 1748. He had several collaborators for this work; some of the factual information is from John Christopher Smith, some of it was written by Robert Price, and the list of compositions is by James Harris. It was reviewed and quoted extensively in various contemporary periodicals and is a useful source of information about Handel's life and activities. There is a footnote in the "Observations" to James Harris's Hermes, citing Harris' discussion "with great judgment and accuracy" the "imitative power in Music...." As for the accuracy of Mainwaring's accounts, I quote a distinguished conductor: "While these memoirs are always riveting and deeply touching, they must to an extent be read with a raised eyebrow, especially with regard to Handel's early years. Generalational hearsay dissolves fable into fact, and historians have learned to question the unreiability of Mainwaring's memory. We cannot know, for example, if Handel's father's disapproval of the boy's passion for music was really as stern as Mainwaring implied.... Nor should the faintly preposterous story of young George having 'a little clavichord privately convey'd to a room at the top of the house...be taken to literally: he was not yet seven years old when this is supposed to have happened" (Dame Jane Glover: Handel in London: The Making of a Genius (2018). Peter Kivey, "Mainwaring's Handel: Its Relation to English Aesthetics" (Journal of the American Musicological Society Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer, 1964), pp. 170-178.

Keywords: music biography prose


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