Andrew Gant

Author and composer Andrew Gant sets Handel’s most famous work, Messiah, into the context of its time and the development of the sacred oratorio in English, and explains how he managed to write it in only 23 days.

Gant looks at Handel’s relationships with his gifted and demanding librettist, Charles Jennens, his varied company of singers, and his supporters, who ranged from the king to his neighbour, Mary Delany. He explains how Handel’s manuscript is a ‘thrilling, living document’ that reveals the speed at which he worked and the clarity and precision of thought that went into it.

Gant is a former Organist of Her Majesty’s Chapels Royal and lecturer in music at St Peter’s College, Oxford.