The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Handel’s German boss fired the composer for spending all his time in London. When they met again, it was... rather awkward.
George Frideric Handel was employed to write music for the court of George, Elector of Hanover in Germany. He preferred, however, to live in London and write music for Queen Anne.
The first thing George Frideric Handel’s oratorio ‘Messiah’ did was to set a hundred and forty-two prisoners free.
George Frideric Handel’s Oratorio ‘Messiah’ tells the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, entirely through quotations from the Bible. Its premiere was given in Dublin during the Lenten fast, and from the very beginning it touched hearts and changed lives.
Lost for seventeen centuries, caught up in a war, and used as a pedestal for a plant pot, this is the world’s oldest surviving song.
The Seikilos Epitaph is the oldest surviving song to be completely written down, text and music. It has made it through almost two-thousand years by the skin of its teeth.
A Scottish widow’s lullaby for her fatherless child inspired his music, but Brahms’s message struck closer to home.
Johannes Brahms never came to Britain, apparently because he was so idolised here that the modest composer found every excuse to avoid it. Nonetheless his ‘Three Intermezzi’ Op. 117 were inspired by a Scottish folksong, and are a reflection on his complex relationship with Clara Schumann and her children, whom he supported financially and emotionally after Clara’s husband (and Brahms’s friend) Robert was taken from them.
A Dubliner with a roving eye and a gift for melody, John Field challenged Europe’s pianists to demand more of themselves.
John Field (1782-1837) was an Irish composer admired by both Chopin and Liszt, who may be considered the ‘father’ of the great piano tradition of Russia. His legendary and enviable silken touch at the piano changed the way the instrument was played all over Europe.