Burrows – författare

A New Year's feast at King Arthur's court is interrupted by the appearance of a gigantic Green Knight, resplendent on horseback. He challenges any one of Arthur's men to behead him, provided that if he survives he can return the blow a year later. Sir Gawain accepts the challenge and decapitates the knight - but the mysterious warrior cheats death and vanishes, bearing his head with him. The following winter Gawain sets out to find the Knight in the wild Northern lands and to keep his side of the bargain. One of the great masterpieces of Middle English poetry, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight magically combines elements of fairy tale and heroic sagas with the pageantry, chivalry and courtly love of medieval Romance.

Handel's English church music spans the complete period of his active career in London: his first anthem and the Utrecht Te Deum were composed soon after his arrival in London, and his last works nearly 40 years later. The repertory, which includes the Coronation Anthem Zadok the Priest, forms one of the most impressive and engaging areas of Baroque church music. Most of it was stimulated by Handel's creative contact with the English Chapel Royal, a group of professional singers in a different tradition from the opera stars with whom he worked in the theatre.This is the first full-length study of Handel's English Church music. As well as dealing with the many aspects of the compositions themselves, it traces the background to the diverse items in the repertory, which relates directly to Handel's constant but changing relationship with the Hanoverian British royal family, and was affected by political and dynastic events. It also examines the circumstances of Handel's performances, the building which (unlike his theatres) still survives in London today.