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Music and Letters 2003 84(3):403-413; doi:10.1093/ml/84.3.403
© 2003 by Oxford University Press
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Handel's ‘Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno’: A Petrarchan Vision in Baroque Style

Mary Ann Parker

Handel's first oratorio, Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, was composed in Rome during the spring of 1707. Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili's libretto owes its inspiration to the last two of Petrarch's six poems entitled I trionfi. Petrarch's meditative, even mystic, poems are a literary authority (in the medieval sense) for Pamphili's allegory of conversion from preoccupation with the sinful flesh to the spiritual life. Several passages from the libretto are directly based on Petrarch. The puzzling final aria, which seems to die away tonally and dynamically, can be interpreted as a reflection of the ending of Petrarch's series, in which Eternity, that is God, triumphs over Time.


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