A Catalogue of Handel's Musical Autographs (Hardcover)

More than 7500 leaves of Handel's musical autographs survive today, as testimony to a creative career in Germany, Italy and London that spanned the first half of the 18th century. Most of the autographs are now in two major collections - the Royal Music Library collection at the British Library, and the Founder's Collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The remainder are dispersed through collections in Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the USA.;This catalogue presents a survey of the complete corpus of Handel's surviving autographs. Musical works and movements to be found in autographs are identified by reference to standard collected editions and the thematic catalogue of Handel's works (HWV) published in volumes I-III of the "Haendel-Handbuch".;The catalogue also records information about the paper characteristics (watermarks and stave-rulings) of each autograph leaf. Watermarks have been classified, and each type is illustrated with a full-size diagram. The information given in the catalogue is an essential guide to the study of Handel's autographs, in particular assisting researchers working from microfilm.;The overall view of Handel's manuscript papers also enables dates to be assigned to undated autographs on the basis of their paper characteristics. Furthermore, the information on 18th-century manuscript paper is relevant to secondary copies of Handel's works, and to the surviving music from other contemporary composers working in Italy and England.