Many of us are still reeling from the plethora of events over the past year celebrating the anniversaries of the birth of Henry Purcell and the death of George Frideric Handel, perhaps the most important composers in the English musical tradition. ‘Purcell, Handel and Literature’, a conference convened on behalf of the Institute of Musical Research, the Open University, The Handel Institute, The Purcell Society and the Royal Musical Association at the University of London, was the perfect capstone event of this significant anniversary year. There were papers not only on the composers of honour, but also on related literary subjects, two convivial receptions at the Handel House and the Foundling Museum (London's two ‘Handel’ museums) and outstanding concerts by the Avison Ensemble at the Foundling Museum and of ‘Cecilian’ music at Grosvenor Chapel. It was an anniversary event not to be missed.

After a warm welcome from organizer Donald Burrows (The Open University) on Thursday afternoon, attendees heard a plenary session with three presentations by eminent speakers: Maureen Duffy (King's College London), who described the long process of ‘Finding Purcell’ for her biography of the composer; Martin Neary (Millenium Consort Singers), whose paper ‘1895–1995: Blazing the Sacred Trail’ examined a variety of interesting aspects of the 1995 tercentenary celebrations of Purcell; and Andrew Pinnock (University of Southampton) and Bruce Wood (Bangor University), who illuminated further the influence of Dryden's sophisticated literary theories on Handel's music in their paper ‘Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Perseverance: Dryden's Plan for English Opera and Its Near-Fulfilment in a Handel Ode’. Subsequently, attendees separated for two sessions. The first focused on Cecilian celebrations, and included Bryan White (University of Leeds) on ‘The Rise and Fall of the London Cecilian Celebrations 1683–1700’ and Pierre Degott (Université Paul Verlaine, Metz) discussing ‘Continuities and Ruptures: Cecilian Odes from Purcell to Handel’. The second session centred on opera and featured Wolfgang Hirschmann (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg) on ‘The British Enchanters and George Granville's Theory of Opera’ and Julia and Frans Muller (Amsterdam) on ‘Umbrage at the Opera: London from Purcell to Handel’ – the latter presentation illustrating Handel's operatic stagings with creative animation and slides. This promising first day was concluded by Amanda Holden's interesting lecture on ‘Handel: A Twenty-First-Century Dramatist’.

Friday morning began with two sessions running concurrently. John H. Roberts (University of California, Berkeley) explored ‘Handel, Jennens and the Advent of Scriptural Oratorio’, Tarcisio Balbo (Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali, Modena) addressed Handel's cuts and modifications to Metastasio's libretto in ‘Catone in Utica (1732): A Case Study’ and Ruth Smith (University of Cambridge) made the first detailed consideration of the longest ‘original composition’ that Handel performed in the theatre: ‘“In this Ballance seek a Character”: The role of “Il Moderato” in L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato’. At the same time, Peter Brown (University of Oxford) discussed ‘“Ombra mai fu”: Shades of Greece and Rome in Works by Handel’, Reinhard Strohm (University of Oxford) examined Handel's musical approaches to classicist ideology in ‘Handel and the Uses of Antiquity’ and Robert Ketterer (University of Iowa) explored the myriad political implications of the ‘Texts and Contexts of Purcell's Dioclesian’.

After tea there were two further sessions. The first, on text–music relationships, included Anthony Hicks (The Open University), who focused on an unusual theme in his paper, ‘Quotations and Quotation Marks in Handel Wordbooks, Especially those of Thomas Morell’, and Walter Kreyszig (University of Saskatchewan), who addressed ‘The Relationship between Literary Text and Musical Text in the Annual St Cecilia Celebrations in England: Henry Purcell's Ode to St Cecilia and George Frideric Handel's Ode for St Cecilia's Day’. The second session included papers on the dramatic features of Handel's music by Graham Cummings (University of Huddersfield), who read ‘Metastasio's Alessandro to Handel's Poro: A Change of Dramatic Emphasis’, and Deborah Rooke (King's College London), who declared the Handelian oratorio Esther a statement of British religious and political identity in ‘Ever-Changing Esther: From the Biblical Text to Handel's First Israelite Oratorio’. After lunch we heard Martin Adams (Trinity College Dublin) link Spanish musical theatre with English Restoration theatre in ‘Unblest Sirens? The Tussle between Music and Verse in Late Seventeenth-Century Dramatic Opera’ and Konstanze Musketa (Stiftung Händel-Haus, Halle), who focused on Handel's childhood educational curriculum and the promotion of German literature in Halle in ‘Handel and German Poetry’. Concurrently, speakers also intermingled literary and musical spheres: Jeffrey Barnouw (University of Texas, Austin) investigated composers' reluctance to set English texts in ‘Poetry into Music: Obstacles and Breakthroughs in Setting English Texts for Purcell and Handel’ and Andrew Shryock (Boston University) discussed ‘The Faithful Text: Oratorio Wordbooks and Handel's Audience’. The afternoon's plenary session featured an outstanding talk by Roger Savage (University of Edinburgh) on the intriguing subject of ‘Purcell's Scurvy Poets’, which debunked the bad press given to Purcell's choices of secular poetry. We also heard brief updates on current projects, including the Purcell Society Edition and the Handel Documents Project. The evening concluded with a reception at the Foundling Museum and a marvellous concert by the Avison Ensemble.

The final day of the conference began with several interesting papers, including Sarah McCleave (The Queen's University of Belfast) on ‘The Muting of Handel's Music; or Deidamia as a Pastoral Figure Without a Voice’ and Liam Gorry (The Queen's University of Belfast) on ‘Characterisation in Handel's Oratorios with Relation to the Accompanied Recitatives’. Jean L. Kreiling (Bridgewater State College) spoke on a hitherto neglected area of research – namely, the reception of Handel in the literary sphere – in ‘The Reception History of Handel's Messiah: Poetic Perspectives’, as did Annette Landgraf (Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle) in ‘The Role of Handel's Music in German Fictional Literature’. Delia da Sousa Correa (The Open University) followed the literary thread with ‘Handel and Purcell in George Eliot's Fiction’ and Matthew Badham (University of York) investigated ‘“Straight Mine Eye Hath Caught New Pleasures”: New Modes of Inward and Outward Contemplation in Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato’.

Next we heard from Matthew Gardiner (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, Heidelberg) on ‘Seventeenth-Century Literary Classics as Eighteenth-Century Libretto Subjects: Congreve, Dryden and Milton’ and Graydon Beeks (Pomona College) on ‘“O Sing unto the Lord”: The Selection of Anthem Texts for Cannons’, where it was apparent that there was much cross-fertilization and friendly competition between Handel, Haym and J. C. Pepusch. Olive Baldwin and Thelma Wilson (Brentwood) took a fresh look at ‘Eccles and the Birthday Celebrations for Queen Anne in 1711’ and Robert Fraser (Open University) investigated unresolved questions surrounding ‘Purcell, the Popish Plot, and the Politics of Latin’. Mark Burden (Queen Mary, University of London) analysed ‘Henry Purcell and Dissent in England, 1660–1684’ and James Garratt (University of Manchester) examined the impact of Georg Gottfried Gervinus's historical treatment of Handel on the composer's reception with ‘German Manliness and Moral Strength: Gervinus's Handel’.

The conference wound down with a plenary session and a panel session. The plenary session highlighted the work of Christopher R. Wilson (University of Hull) and Ellen T. Harris (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). The former explored how music helped to shape Shakespeare as England's national poet and furthered the cause of English opera a century after his death in ‘Restoration Shakespeare and Music: Davenant to Shadwell’; the latter sought to uncover Handel's private thoughts in his cantatas in ‘The Cantata as Diary’. In the panel session entitled ‘“This Glorious Approbation of Sounds”: Handel, Purcell, and London's Eighteenth-Century Entertainments’, Berta Joncus (Goldsmiths, University of London), Žak Ozmo (L'Avventura London) and I (Vanessa L. Rogers, Wabash College) described the results of new research on ballad opera and pleasure garden entertainments; we investigated why this repertory has been overlooked and how it challenges current practices in musicology, historically informed performance and the making of recordings. The conference attendees then adjourned to the Handel House reception, where they could view the exhibition ‘Mr Handel's Friends’, including correspondence and diaries from the Earl of Malmesbury and the original Mercier portrait of Handel. The evening closed with a concert of ‘Cecilian’ music (very appropriate as the next day was St Cecilia's Day) at Grosvenor Chapel directed by Laurence Cummings (Royal Academy of Music).

The sessions were cleverly arranged so that attendees could hear a diverse number of presentations in any one of them. The conference was well attended (nearly one hundred delegates) and by a very international crowd; in addition, the attendance of several scholars of literature (and of others from outside the music profession and academia) resulted in an excellent balance of topics. It also deserves mention that the conference was able to give Purcell almost the same amount of coverage as Handel, a difficult outcome to achieve, as, internationally, Handel is still studied and performed much more than the older Englishman. The overall quality of the papers was good, and the receptions and diverse musical events made this a satisfying weekend. The conference was well organized by Donald Burrows, with assistance fromValerie James (Institute of Musical Research, University of London); kudos must be given to them for this final Handel and Purcell event of the year, the ideal culmination of the many anniversary activities of 2009.