Handel's Messiah: Comfort for God's peopleCalvin R. Stapert
In Handel’s Messiah, Calvin R. Stapert presents Handel’s history and cultural context and explains the content of Messiah, a work most famous for the Hallelujah Chorus.
I approached this book as someone who was interested to know more about what was behind the Hallelujah Chorus but was not particularly a classical music enthusiast. While the book had some interesting facts, I had trouble getting through the excessive detail so skipped some segments. You would need to be quite interested in the topic to make it through the whole book.
I “read” the book in audiobook format. I was quite impressed by the audiobook production. The narration was interspersed with recordings of the musical pieces being discussed. To make the most of these it would be better to get the audiobook on CD rather than the lower audio quality. While other reviewers have complained about the narration, I liked it. I thought the narrator had just the right kind of British accent for a work on this topic.
If you are interested in listening to this audiobook, you can get it free from christianaudio.com until the end of December 2010
Review copy provided by christianaudio.com
