[G.F. Handel] F. Chrysander. Autograph manuscript of the first volume of his great Handel biography, 1857

[George Frideric Handel] Friedrich Chrysander

Autograph manuscript of the first volume of his great Handel biography

a working manuscript, also used as the printer's copy, with some indications for the printer in red ink, with the autograph title-page ("G. F. Händel. / von / Friedrich Chrysander. Erster Band. 1858...") and the conclusion of the preface to Gervinus on a separate 8vo bifolium, the two books of the first volume with their own title-pages ("Erstes Buch. / Jugendzeit und Lehrjahre in Deutschland. 1685-1707"..."Zweites Buch. Die grosse Wanderung. 1707-1720"), containing a number of musical examples, with extensive deletions, corrections and revisions

...Händel's Werke sind es denn auch, deren volleres Verständniß alle unsere jetzigen Bestrebungen müssen bewirken helfen. Wer jemals von Händel erfaßt ist, der wird den Wunsch theilen, seine Schöpfungen aus dem Ganzen heraus und als Ganzes kennen zu lernen, zu hören und gedruckt zu besitzen...

[4], 554 pages, 4to (21 x 17.7cm), the individual single leaves contained loose in contemporary blue wrappers, the preface dated 20 December 1857, the first two paragraphs, and most of the third, of the preface to Gervinus lacking, some light dust-staining to edges, a few tiny tears to title of book one and to last leaf of book two; together with a substantial portion of Chrysander's autograph of the third volume (pages 17-44, 55-184 and 221-228), no place or date 

A STUPENDOUS WORKING MANUSCRIPT OF A SUBSTANTIAL PART OF ONE OF THE GREAT MONUMENTS OF HANDEL STUDIES AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY MUSICOLOGY. 

The life of the great nineteenth-century music scholar Friedrich Chrysander (1826-1901) was dedicated principally to Handel. In 1856, together with Georg Gottfried Gervinus, Chrysander founded the Händel-Gesellschaft with the aim of publishing Handel's collected works, in the event editing nearly all the 48 completed volumes by himself. His great biography of Handel, published in three volumes by Breitkopf & Härtel between 1858 and 1867 (and which remained unfinished, stopping at the year 1740), remains one of the greatest achievements of nineteenth-century musicology, on a par with Spitta's J.S. Bach (1873 and 1880) and Jahn's Mozart (1855-1859).