A piece of research that started as a side project has won the prestigious Händel-Forschungspreis – an annual prize by the German Handel Society awarded for outstanding research on the life and work of the composer George Frideric Handel.
Associate Professor Rebekka Sandmeier, director of the SA College of Music, and a German colleague, Dr Dominik Höink of the University of Münster, were nominated for the publication Aufführungen von Händels Oratorien im deutschsprachigen Raum (1800–1900): Texte und Rezensionen in ausgewählten Musikzeitschriften, which will be published by V&R Unipress in September 2014.
The publication was produced with the help of student research assistants, both in Germany and at UCT (Maike Gevers, Nicole d’Oliveira and Itunu Ogunseitan) and, in addition to its scholarly merit, was chosen because it introduced students to research on Handel. Their research has put facts to what was only guessed at before, and has shown many of these guesses to be incorrect. For instance, it has always been assumed that Messiah was the most commonly performed oratorio, followed by Judas Maccabeus and Israel in Egypt. Messiah’s status has been confirmed – that was no surprise – but in fact the next most commonly performed oratorio was Samson.
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