Every Valley - by Charles King (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"A delicious history of music, power, love, genius, royalty and adventure."--Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The World

George Frideric Handel's Messiah is arguably the greatest piece of participatory art ever created. Adored by millions, it is performed each year by renowned choirs and orchestras, as well as by audiences singing along with the words on their cell phones.

But this work of triumphant joy was born in a worried age. Britain in the early Enlightenment was a place of astonishing creativity but also the seat of an empire mired in war, enslavement, and conflicts over everything from the legitimacy of government to the meaning of truth. Against this turbulent background, prize-winning author Charles King has crafted a cinematic drama of the troubled lives that shaped a masterpiece of hope.

Every Valley presents a depressive dissenter stirred to action by an ancient prophecy; an actress plagued by an abusive husband and public scorn; an Atlantic sea captain and penniless philanthropist; and an African Muslim man held captive in the American colonies and hatching a dangerous plan for getting back home. At center stage is Handel himself, composer to kings but, at midlife, in ill health and straining to keep an audience's attention. Set amid royal intrigue, theater scandals, and political conspiracy, Every Valley is entertaining, inspiring, unforgettable.

Review Quotes

"A work of vivid social and cultural commentary, it functions also as an in-depth study of artistic creation, how 'Messiah' came to be, but also of the unstoppable spigot that was Handel's musical imagination." --John Adams, The New York Times Book Review

"[C]ompelling. King transforms Handel's world into a place we can all recognize and understand as the foundation for our own." --The Washington Post

"Masterfully interlocks the stories of the people and events that inspired and influenced the creation of Handel's glorious Messiah. The serendipitous composition of the music for George Frideric Handel's most famous work has been told many times, but maybe never so engagingly as in Every Valley... King has opened a dazzling skylight above Handel's time." --The Christian Science Monitor

"Much closer to the teeming panorama of a novel like War and Peace than the narrow focus of most books about music history... a rare blend of scholarship, ingenuity and empathy." --The Times [London]

"Smartly written . . . In explaining the social and biographical background of the story of Messiah, King brings the masterpiece to life -- and keeps it alive." --The Washington Examiner

"King takes his cue from the oratorio's ability to convey, era after era, 'a transporting sense that something cosmic and profound was at stake, '" --The Atlantic

"A ringing history of George Frideric Handel's Messiah and its turbulent birth. . . King writes winningly of the history surrounding Handel's life and times . . . A swiftly moving, constantly engaging portrait of a beloved masterpiece." --Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"[T]his work of popular history by Charles King reveals a movie-worthy backstory." --Parade

"By revealing the murky circumstances in which it was created, Charles King's fascinating history of the oratorio shows it in a new light." --The Guardian

"King's writing is readable, well researched and rich with detail. . . . When it comes to the music, he consistently grasps the right end of the stick and uses no empty words - indeed, his jargon-free attempt to explain not just what Baroque music does but what it actually sounds like is full of understanding, setting a good example for any who would write about music." -- Gramophone

"Charles King explains the enduring appeal of Handel's Messiah since its premiere in London nearly three hundred years ago." --The New York Review

"You'll never hear this oratorio the same way after reading this." --The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Charles King evokes the sacred upswell of the "Hallelujah Chorus" and other songs in his spirited, pitch-perfect Every Valley." --The Minnesota Star Tribune

"Ecstatic, affecting, entirely weird, Handel's Messiah indeed seems -- as a listener wrote after its 1742 Dublin debut -- 'a species of music different from any other.' With brio, Charles King pulls aside the curtain behind the work, to reveal the scandal and intrigue, opportunists and thugs, deep pain and soaring optimism, that Handel transmuted, in less than a month, into a sublime 130 pages. A book of power and glory, brimming with emotion and dazzling in its reach."--Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Cleopatra and The Revolutionary

"A delicious history of music, power, love, genius, royalty and adventure. A study of creativity and humanism, beautifully told, filled with charm and worldliness, deeply researched and as compelling as a symphony with a full choir of amazing characters who sing their songs around the central figure of Handel himself. Unforgettable."--Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The World: A Family History of Humanity

"A lovely story, beautifully told--and featuring a veritable Who's Who of the Georgian era. An absolute delight."--Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads

"In Every Valley, Charles King shows in exquisite detail how George Frideric Handel's epic work, the Messiah, sprang not from one solitary composer's genius but out of the dramatic interplay of eighteenth-century lives and their times. Note by note, page by page, King takes us beyond an imagined Enlightenment to the sobering realities of a world that included the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. Every Valley is a fascinating book, of interest to scholars and accessible to all readers."--Henry Louis Gates Jr., author of Stony the Road

"Vividly depicting life in Britain during the turbulence of the 1700's, Charles King celebrates Handel's Messiah as a glorious beacon of hope."--Elaine Pagels, National Book Award-winning author of The Gnostic Gospels

"Charles King takes his readers on a mesmerizing journey of musical genius. There is only one Handel, and only one Messiah, and to understand how each was created is to become immersed in one of the most fascinating and creative moments in human history. King's lyrical writing resonates long after the final note fades away."--Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and A World on Fire

"Charles King's erudition is remarkable but never obtrusive, for he is a wonderful story-teller. Every Valley is eighteenth century history as page-turner, evoking both tears and laughter."--Archie Brown, Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University

About the Author