Messiah is an English-language
oratorioAn oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
composed in 1741 by
George Frideric HandelGeorge Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
, with a scriptural text compiled by
Charles JennensCharles Jennens was an English landowner and patron of the arts, who assembled the text for five of Handel's oratorios: Saul, Israel in Egypt, L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, Messiah, and Belshazzar...
from the King James Bible and the
Book of Common PrayerThe Book of Common Prayer is the short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches. The original book, published in 1549 , in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English...
. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premiere nearly a year later. After an initially modest public reception the oratorio gained in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known and most frequently performed choral works in Western music.
Handel's reputation in England, where he had lived since 1713, had been established through his compositions of Italian opera. He turned to English oratorio in the 1730s, in response to changes in public taste;
Messiah was his sixth work in this genre. Although its structure resembles that of conventional opera, it is not in dramatic form; there are no impersonations of characters and very little direct speech. Instead, Jennens's text is an extended reflection on Jesus Christ as
MessiahA messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
, moving from the prophetic utterances of
IsaiahIsaiah ; Greek: ', Ēsaïās ; "Yahu is salvation") was a prophet in the 8th-century BC Kingdom of Judah.Jews and Christians consider the Book of Isaiah a part of their Biblical canon; he is the first listed of the neviim akharonim, the later prophets. Many of the New Testament teachings of Jesus...
and others, through the
IncarnationThe Incarnation in traditional Christianity is the belief that Jesus Christ the second person of the Trinity, also known as God the Son or the Logos , "became flesh" by being conceived in the womb of a woman, the Virgin Mary, also known as the Theotokos .The Incarnation is a fundamental theological...
,
PassionThe Passion is the Christian theological term used for the events and suffering – physical, spiritual, and mental – of Jesus in the hours before and including his trial and execution by crucifixion...
and
ResurrectionThe Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus states that Jesus returned to bodily life on the third day following his death by crucifixion. It is a key element of Christian faith and theology and part of the Nicene Creed: "On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures"...
of Christ to his ultimate glorification in heaven.
Handel wrote
Messiah for modest vocal and instrumental forces, with optional settings for many of the individual numbers. In the years after his death the work was adapted for performance on a much larger scale, with giant orchestras and choirs. In other efforts to update it, its orchestration was revised and amplified by (among others)
MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the trend has been towards authenticity; most contemporary performances show a greater fidelity towards Handel's original intentions, although "big
Messiah" productions continue to be mounted. Since a near-complete version was issued on 78 rpm discs in 1928, the work has been recorded many times.
Background
In 1741 Handel, born in
HalleHalle is the largest city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish it from the town of Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia...
, Germany in 1685, had been resident in England for more than a quarter of a century, and a naturalised British subject since 1727. His pre-eminence in British music was evident from the honours he had accumulated, including: a pension from the court of
King George IIGeorge II was King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Archtreasurer and Prince-elector of the Holy Roman Empire from 11 June 1727 until his death.George was the last British monarch born outside Great Britain. He was born and brought up in Northern Germany...
, the office of Composer of Musick for the
Chapel RoyalA Chapel Royal is a body of priests and singers who serve the spiritual needs of their sovereign wherever they are called upon to do so.-Austria:...
and—most unusually for a living person—a statue erected in his honour, in
Vauxhall GardensVauxhall Gardens was a pleasure garden, one of the leading venues for public entertainment in London, England from the mid 17th century to the mid 19th century. Originally known as New Spring Gardens, the site was believed to have opened before the Restoration of 1660 with the first mention being...
. Within a large and varied musical output, Handel was a vigorous champion of Italian opera, which he had introduced to London in 1711 with
RinaldoRinaldo is an opera by George Frideric Handel composed in 1711. It is the first Italian language opera written specifically for the London stage. The libretto was prepared by Giacomo Rossi from a scenario provided by Aaron Hill. The work was first performed at the Queen's Theatre in London's...
. He had subsequently written and presented more than 40 such operas in London's theatres. However, by the early 1730s public taste was beginning to change, and the popular success of
John GayJohn Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...
and
Johann Christoph PepuschJohann Christoph Pepusch , also known as John Christopher Pepusch and Dr Pepusch, was a German-born composer who spent most of his working life in England....
's
The Beggar's OperaThe Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today...
(first performed in 1728) had heralded a spate of English-language ballad-operas that mocked the pretensions of Italian opera. With box-office receipts falling, Handel's productions were increasingly reliant on private subsidies from the nobility, and such funding became harder to obtain after the launch in 1730 of the "
Opera of the NobilityThe Opera of the Nobility was an opera company set up and funded in 1733 by a group of nobles opposed to George II of England, in order to rival the Second Royal Academy of Music company under Handel .Nicola Porpora was invited to be its musical director and Owen Swiny considered as its talent scout...
"—a rival company to his own. Handel eventually overcame this challenge, but at considerable cost to his own private fortune.
Although future prospects for Italian operas in London declined during the 1730s, Handel remained committed to the genre; however he began to introduce English-language oratorios as occasional alternatives to his staged works. As a young man in Rome in 1707–08 he had written two Italian oratorios at a time when opera performances in the city were temporarily forbidden under papal decree. His first venture into English oratorio had been
Esther which was written and performed for a private patron in about 1718. In 1732 Handel brought a revised and expanded version of
Esther to the
King's Theatre, HaymarketHer Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre, in Haymarket, City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre...
, where members of the royal family attended a glittering premiere on 6 May. Its success encouraged Handel to write two more oratorios (
DeborahDeborah is an oratorio by George Frideric Handel. It was one of Handel's very early oratorios and was based on a libretto by Samuel Humphreys. It received its premiere performance at the King's Theatre in London on 17 March 1733....
and
Athalia), and all three oratorios were performed to large and appreciative audiences at the
Sheldonian TheatreThe Sheldonian Theatre, located in Oxford, England, was built from 1664 to 1668 after a design by Christopher Wren for the University of Oxford. The building is named after Gilbert Sheldon, chancellor of the university at the time and the project's main financial backer...
in Oxford in the summer of 1733. Undergraduates reportedly sold their furniture to raise the money for the five-shilling tickets.
In 1735 Handel received the text for a new oratorio named
SaulSaul is an oratorio in three acts written by George Frideric Handel with a libretto by Charles Jennens. Taken from the 1st Book of Samuel, the story of Saul focuses on the first king of Israel’s relationship with his eventual successor, David; one which turns from admiration to envy and hatred,...
from its librettist
Charles JennensCharles Jennens was an English landowner and patron of the arts, who assembled the text for five of Handel's oratorios: Saul, Israel in Egypt, L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, Messiah, and Belshazzar...
, a wealthy landowner with musical and literary interests. Because Handel's main creative concern was still with opera, he did not write the music for
Saul until 1738, in preparation for his 1738–39 theatrical season. The work opened at the King's Theatre in January 1739 to a warm reception, and was quickly followed by the less successful oratorio
Israel in Egypt (which may also have come from Jennens). Although Handel continued to write and present operas, the trend towards English-language productions became irresistible as the decade ended, and after three performances of his last Italian opera
DeidamiaDeidamia was George Frideric Handel's last Italian opera. The Italian text was by Paolo Antonio Rolli.-Performance history:The opera was first performed on 10 January 1741 at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, London. The opera received only three performances, at a time when the public was becoming...
in January and February 1741, he abandoned the genre. In July 1741 Jennens sent him a new libretto for an oratorio, and in a letter dated 10 July to his friend Edward Holdsworth, Jennens wrote: "I hope [Handel] will lay out his whole Genius & Skill upon it, that the Composition may excell all his former Compositions, as the Subject excells every other subject. The Subject is Messiah".
Synopsis
In the Christian tradition, the figure of the "Messiah" or redeemer is identified with the person of Jesus, known by his followers as the Christ or "Jesus Christ", although the extent to which he made this claim for himself is less clear. Handel's
Messiah has been described by the early-music scholar Richard Luckett as "a commentary on [Jesus Christ's] Nativity, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension", beginning with God's promises as spoken by the prophets and ending with Christ's glorification in heaven. In contrast with most of Handel's oratorios, the singers in
Messiah do not assume dramatic roles, there is no single, dominant narrative voice, and very little use is made of
quoted speechDirect or quoted speech is a sentence that reports speech or thought in its original form, as phrased by the first speaker. It is usually enclosed in quotation marks...
. Jennens's intention was not to dramatise the life and teachings of Jesus, but to acclaim the "Mystery of Godliness", using a compilation of extracts from the Authorized King James Version of the Bible and the
Book of Common PrayerThe Book of Common Prayer is the short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches. The original book, published in 1549 , in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English...
.
The three-part structure of the work approximates to that of Handel's three-act operas, with the "parts" subdivided by Jennens into "scenes". Each scene is a collection of individual numbers or "movements" which take the form of
recitativeRecitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...
s,
ariaAn aria in music was originally any expressive melody, usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The term is now used almost exclusively to describe a self-contained piece for one voice usually with orchestral accompaniment...
s and choruses. There are two instrumental numbers, the opening
Sinfony in the style of a
French overtureThe French overture is a musical form widely used in the Baroque period. Its basic formal division is into two parts, which are usually enclosed by double bars and repeat signs. They are complementary in styles , and the first ends with a half-cadence that requires an answering structure with a...
, and the
pastoralFor Beethoven's Pastoral symphony, see Symphony No. 6 Pastorale refers to something of a pastoral nature in music, whether in form or in mood....
Pifa, often called the "pastoral symphony", at the mid-point of Part I.
In Part I, the Messiah's coming and the Virgin Birth are predicted by the
Old TestamentThe Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
prophets. The
annunciation to the shepherdsThe Annunciation to the shepherds is an episode in the Nativity of Jesus described in the Bible in Luke 2, in which angels tell a group of shepherds about the birth of Jesus...
of the birth of the Christ is represented in the words of
St Luke's GospelThe Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...
. Part II covers
Christ's Passion and his deathThe Passion is the Christian theological term used for the events and suffering – physical, spiritual, and mental – of Jesus in the hours before and including his trial and execution by crucifixion...
, his
ResurrectionThe Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus states that Jesus returned to bodily life on the third day following his death by crucifixion. It is a key element of Christian faith and theology and part of the Nicene Creed: "On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures"...
and Ascension, the first spreading of the
GospelA gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
through the world, and a definitive statement of God's glory summarised in the "Hallelujah". Part III begins with the promise of Redemption, followed by a prediction of the
Day of JudgmentThe Last Judgment, Final Judgment, Day of Judgment, Judgment Day, or The Day of the Lord in Christian theology, is the final and eternal judgment by God of every nation. The concept is found in all the Canonical gospels, particularly the Gospel of Matthew. It will purportedly take place after the...
and the "
general ResurrectionResurrection of the Dead is a belief found in a number of eschatologies, most commonly in Christian, Islamic, Jewish and Zoroastrian. In general, the phrase refers to a specific event in the future; multiple prophesies in the histories of these religions assert that the dead will be brought back to...
", ending with the final victory over sin and death and the acclamation of Christ. According to the musicologist
Donald BurrowsDonald James Burrows is Professor of Music at the Open University, and a leading scholar of the music of George Frideric Handel.He read History and Music at Trinity Hall, Cambridge ....
, much of the text is so allusive as to be largely incomprehensible to those ignorant of the biblical accounts. For the benefit of his audiences, Jennens printed and issued a pamphlet explaining the reasons for his choices of scriptural selections.
Libretto
Charles Jennens was born around 1700, into a prosperous landowning family whose lands and properties in Warwickshire and Leicestershire he would eventually inherit. His religious and political views—he opposed the
Act of Settlement of 1701The Act of Settlement is an act of the Parliament of England that was passed in 1701 to settle the succession to the English throne on the Electress Sophia of Hanover and her Protestant heirs. The act was later extended to Scotland, as a result of the Treaty of Union , enacted in the Acts of Union...
which secured the accession to the British throne for the
House of HanoverThe House of Hanover is a deposed German royal dynasty which has ruled the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg , the Kingdom of Hanover, the Kingdom of Great Britain, the Kingdom of Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
—prevented him from receiving his degree from
Balliol College, OxfordBalliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....
, or from pursuing any form of public career. However, his family's wealth enabled him to live a life of leisure while devoting himself to his literary and musical interests. Although the musicologist
Watkins ShawHarold Watkins Shaw, OBE, known as Watkins Shaw , was a British musicologist and educator best known for his critical edition of Handel's Messiah compiled between 1957 and 1965, which version has largely supplanted that of Ebenezer Prout in British performance - The Times obituarist went so far as...
dismisses Jennens as "a conceited figure of no special ability",
Donald BurrowsDonald James Burrows is Professor of Music at the Open University, and a leading scholar of the music of George Frideric Handel.He read History and Music at Trinity Hall, Cambridge ....
has written: "of Jennens's musical literacy there can be no doubt". He was certainly devoted to Handel's music, having helped to finance the publication of every Handel score since
Rodelinda in 1725. By 1741, after their collaboration on
Saul, a warm friendship had developed between the two, and Handel was a frequent visitor to the Jennens family estate at
GopsallGopsall is an area of Crown Estate land in North West Leicestershire, England. It is located between the villages of Appleby Magna, Shackerstone, Twycross and Snarestone....
.
Jennens's letter to Holdsworth of 10 July 1741, in which he first mentions
Messiah, suggests that the text was a recent work, probably assembled earlier that summer. As a devout Anglican and believer in scriptural authority, part of Jennens's intention was to challenge advocates of
DeismDeism in religious philosophy is the belief that reason and observation of the natural world, without the need for organized religion, can determine that the universe is the product of an all-powerful creator. According to deists, the creator does not intervene in human affairs or suspend the...
, who rejected the doctrine of divine intervention in human affairs. Shaw describes the text as "a meditation of our Lord as Messiah in Christian thought and belief", and despite his reservations on Jennens's character, concedes that the finished
wordbookA libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
"amounts to little short of a work of genius". There is no evidence that Handel played any active role in the selection or preparation of the text, such as he did in the case of
Saul; it seems, rather, that he saw no need to make any significant amendment to Jennens's work.
Composition
The music for
Messiah was completed in 24 days of swift composition. Having received Jennens's text some time after 10 July 1741, Handel began work on it on 22 August. His records show that he had completed Part I in outline by 28 August, Part II by 6 September and Part III by 12 September, followed by two days of "filling up" to produce the finished work on 14 September. The
autographAn autograph is a document transcribed entirely in the handwriting of its author, as opposed to a typeset document or one written by an amanuensis or a copyist; the meaning overlaps with that of the word holograph.Autograph also refers to a person's artistic signature...
score's 259 pages show some signs of haste such as blots, scratchings-out, unfilled bars and other uncorrected errors, but according to the music scholar Richard Luckett the number of errors is remarkably small in a document of this length.
At the end of his manuscript Handel wrote the letters "SDG"—
Soli Deo Gloria, "To God alone the glory". This inscription, taken with the speed of composition, has encouraged belief in the apocryphal story that Handel wrote the music in a fervour of divine inspiration in which, as he wrote the "Hallelujah" chorus, "he saw all heaven before him". In fact, as Burrows points out, many of Handel's operas, of comparable length and structure to
Messiah, were composed within similar timescales between theatrical seasons. The effort of writing so much music in so short a time was not unusual for Handel and his contemporaries; Handel commenced his next oratorio,
Samson, within a week of finishing
Messiah, and completed his draft of this new work in a month. In accordance with his frequent practice when writing new works, Handel adapted existing compositions for use in
Messiah, in this case drawing on two recently completed Italian duets and one written twenty years previously. Thus,
Se tu non lasci amore from 1722 became the basis of "O Death, where is thy sting?"; "His yoke is easy" and "And he shall purify" were drawn from
Quel fior che alla'ride (July 1741), "Unto us a child is born" and "All we like sheep" from
Nò, di voi non vo' fidarmi (July 1741). Handel's instrumentation in the score is often imprecise, again in line with contemporary convention, where the use of certain instruments and combinations was assumed and did not need to be written down by the composer; later copyists would fill in the details.
Before the first performance Handel made numerous revisions to his manuscript score, in part to match the forces available for the 1742 Dublin premiere; it is probable that his originally conceived version of the work was not performed in his lifetime. Between 1742 and 1754 he continued to revise and recompose individual movements, sometimes to suit the requirements of particular singers. The first published score of
Messiah was issued in 1767, eight years after Handel's death, though this was based on relatively early manuscripts and included none of Handel's later revisions.
Dublin, 1742
Handel's decision to give a season of concerts in Dublin in the winter of 1741–42 arose from an invitation from the
Duke of DevonshireWilliam Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire, KG, PC was a British nobleman and Whig politician, the son of William Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Devonshire and Hon. Rachel Russell....
, then serving as
Lord Lieutenant of IrelandThe Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was the British King's representative and head of the Irish executive during the Lordship of Ireland , the Kingdom of Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
. A violinist friend of Handel's, Matthew Dubourg, was in Dublin as the Lord Lieutenant's bandmaster; he would look after the tour's orchestral requirements. Whether Handel originally intended to perform
Messiah in Dublin is uncertain; he did not inform Jennens of any such plan, for the latter wrote to Holdsworth on 2 December 1741: "...it was some mortification to me to hear that instead of performing
Messiah here he has gone into Ireland with it." After arriving in Dublin on 18 November 1741, Handel arranged a subscription series of six concerts, to be held between December 1741 and February 1742 at the Great Music Hall,
Fishamble StreetFishamble Street is a street in Dublin, Ireland within the old city walls.The street joins Wood Quay at the Fish Slip near Fyan's Castle. It is mentioned in the 14th century as Vicus Piscariorum and as Fish Street. In 1577, Stanihurst named it as St John's Street...
. These concerts were so popular that a second series was quickly arranged;
Messiah figured in neither series.
In early March Handel began discussions with the appropriate committees for a charity concert, to be given in April, at which he intended to present
Messiah. He sought and was given permission from St Patrick's and
Christ ChurchChrist Church Cathedral is the cathedral of the United Dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough and the cathedral of the Ecclesiastical province of the United Provinces of Dublin and Cashel in the Church of Ireland...
cathedrals to use their choirs for this occasion. These forces amounted to 16 men and 16 boy choristers; several of the men were allocated solo parts. The women soloists were Christina Maria Avoglio, who had sung the main soprano roles in the two subscription series, and Susannah Cibber, an established stage actress and contralto who had sung in the second series. To accommodate Cibber's voice range the recitative "Then shall the eyes of the blind" and the aria "He shall feed his flock" were transposed down to F major. The performance, in the Fishamble Street hall, was originally announced for 12 April, but was deferred for a day "at the request of persons of Distinction".
The three charities that were to benefit were prisoners' debt relief, the Mercer's Hospital, and the Charitable Infirmary. In its report on a public rehearsal, the
Dublin News-Letter described the oratorio as "...far surpass[ing] anything of that Nature which has been performed in this or any other Kingdom". Seven hundred people attended the premiere on 13 April. So that the largest possible audience could be admitted to the concert, gentlemen were requested to remove their swords, and ladies were asked not to wear hoops in their dresses. The performance earned unanimous praise from the assembled press: "Words are wanting to express the exquisite delight it afforded to the admiring and crouded (
sic) Audience". A Dublin clergyman, Rev. Delaney, was so overcome by Susanna Cibber's rendering of "He was despised" that reportedly he leapt to his feet and cried: "Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee!" The takings amounted to around £400, providing about £127 to each of the three nominated charities and securing the release of 142 indebted prisoners.
Handel remained in Dublin for four months after the premiere. He organised a second performance of
Messiah on 3 June, which was announced as "the last Performance of Mr Handel's during his Stay in this Kingdom". In this second
Messiah, which was for Handel's private benefit, Cibber reprised her role from the first performance, though Avoglio may have been replaced by a Mrs Maclaine; details of other performers are not recorded.
London, 1743–59
The warm reception accorded to
Messiah in Dublin was not repeated in London when Handel introduced the work at the Covent Garden theatre on 23 March 1743. Avoglio and Cibber were again the chief soloists; they were joined by the tenor
John BeardJohn Beard was an English tenor of the 18th century. He is best remembered for creating an extensive number of roles in the operas and oratorios of George Frideric Handel....
, a veteran of Handel's operas, the bass Thomas Rheinhold and two other sopranos, Kitty Clive and Miss Edwards. The first performance was overshadowed by views expressed in the press that the work's subject-matter was too exalted to be performed in a theatre, particularly by secular singer-actresses such as Cibber and Clive. In an attempt to deflect such sensibilities, in London Handel had avoided the name
Messiah and presented the work as the "New Sacred Oratorio".
As was his custom, Handel rearranged the music to suit his singers. He wrote a new setting of "And lo, the angel of the Lord" for Clive, never used subsequently. He added a tenor song for Beard: "Their sound is gone out", which had appeared in Jennens's original libretto but had not been in the Dublin performances. The custom of standing for the "Hallelujah" chorus originates from a belief that, at the London premiere, King George II did so, but there is no compelling evidence that the king was present, or that he attended any subsequent performance of
Messiah; the first reference to the practice of standing appears in a letter dated 1756.
London's initially cool reception of
Messiah led Handel to reduce the season's planned six performances to three, and not to present the work at all in 1744—to the considerable annoyance of Jennens, whose relations with the composer temporarily soured. At Jennens's request, Handel made several changes in the music for the 1745 revival: "Their sound is gone out" became a choral piece, the soprano song "Rejoice greatly" was recomposed in shortened form, and the transpositions for Cibber's voice were restored to their original soprano range. Nevertheless, Jennens wrote to Holdsworth on 30 August 1745: "[Handel] has made a fine Entertainment of it, though not near so good as he might & ought to have done. I have with great difficulty made him correct some of the grosser faults in the composition..." Handel directed two performances at Covent Garden in 1745, on 9 and 11 April, and then set the work aside for four years.
The 1749 revival at Covent Garden, under the proper title of
Messiah, saw the appearance of two female soloists who would henceforth be closely associated with Handel's music:
Giulia FrasiGiulia Frasi was an Italian operatic soprano who was primarily active in the city of London. A student of educator and historian Charles Burney, Burney described her sound as "a sweet and clear voice, and a smooth and chaste style of singing, which, though cold and unimpassioned, pleased natural...
and
Caterina GalliCaterina Galli was an Italian operatic mezzo-soprano. She first rose to fame in England in the 1740s and early 1750s where she was particularly admired for her performances in the works of George Frideric Handel...
. In the following year these were joined by the male alto
Gaetano GuadagniGaetano Guadagni was an Italian mezzo-soprano castrato singer, most famous for singing the role of Orpheus at the premiere of Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice in 1762.- Career :...
, for whom Handel composed new versions of "But who may abide" and "Thou art gone up on high". The year 1750 also saw the institution of the annual charity performances of
Messiah at London's
Foundling HospitalThe Foundling Hospital in London, England was founded in 1741 by the philanthropic sea captain Thomas Coram. It was a children's home established for the "education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children." The word "hospital" was used in a more general sense than it is today, simply...
, which continued until Handel's death and beyond. The 1754 performance at the hospital is the first for which full details of the orchestral and vocal forces survive. The orchestra included fifteen violins, five violas, three cellos, two double-basses, four bassoons, four oboes, two trumpets, two horns and drums. In the chorus of nineteen were six trebles from the Chapel Royal; the remainder, all men, were divided among altos, tenors and basses. Frasi, Galli and Beard led the five soloists, who were required to assist the chorus. For this performance the transposed Guadagni arias were restored to the soprano voice. By 1754 Handel was severely afflicted by the onset of blindness, and in 1755 he turned over the direction of the
Messiah hospital performance to his pupil, J.C. Smith. However, he apparently resumed his duties in 1757 and may have continued thereafter. The final performance of the work at which Handel was present was at Covent Garden on 6 April 1759, eight days before his death.
18th century
During the 1750s
Messiah was performed increasingly at festivals and cathedrals throughout the country. Individual choruses and arias were occasionally extracted for use as anthems or
motetIn classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...
s in church services, or as concert pieces, a practice that grew in the 19th century and has continued ever since. After Handel's death, performances were given in
FlorenceFlorence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
(1768), New York (excerpts, 1770),
Hamburg-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
(1772), and
MannheimMannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....
(1777), where
MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
first heard it. In 1745
Christoph Willibald GluckChristoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...
had accepted an invitation to become house composer at London's King's Theatre, travelling to England in the company of
Georg Christian, Fürst von Lobkowitz Johann Georg Christian, Fürst von Lobkowitz , was an Austrian Generalfeldmarschall....
. Either Gluck or Lobkowitz bought or came in the possession of a first edition of Handel's
Messiah. This copy was used around 1789 by
MozartWolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
for his adaption of this oratorio (K. 572). For the performances in Handel's lifetime and in the decades following his death, the musical forces used in the Foundling Hospital performance of 1754 are thought by Burrows to be typical. However, a fashion for large-scale performances began in 1784, in a series of commemorative concerts of Handel's music given in
Westminster AbbeyThe Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
under the patronage of
King George IIIGeorge III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...
. A plaque on the Abbey wall records that "The Band consisting of DXXV [525] vocal & instrumental performers was conducted by Joah Bates Esqr." In a 1955 article,
Sir Malcolm SargentSir Harold Malcolm Watts Sargent was an English conductor, organist and composer widely regarded as Britain's leading conductor of choral works...
, a proponent of large-scale performances, wrote, "Mr Bates ... had known Handel well and respected his wishes. The orchestra employed was two hundred and fifty strong, including twelve horns, twelve trumpets, six trombones and three pairs of timpani (some made especially large)." In 1787 further performances were given at the Abbey; advertisements promised, "The Band will consist of Eight Hundred Performers".
In continental Europe, performances of
Messiah were departing from Handel's practices in a different way: his score was being drastically reorchestrated to suit contemporary tastes. In 1786, Johann Adam Hiller presented
Messiah with updated scoring in Berlin Cathedral. In 1788 Hiller presented a performance of his revision with a choir of 259 and an orchestra of 87 strings, 10 bassoons, 11 oboes, 8 flutes, 8 horns, 4 clarinets, 4 trombones, 7 trumpets, timpani, harpsichord and organ. The following year, Mozart prepared an arrangement of
Messiah to be given in Vienna. Writing for a small-scale performance, he eliminated the organ continuo, added parts for flutes, clarinets, trombones and horns, recomposed some passages and rearranged others. The performance took place on 6 March 1789 in the rooms of Count Johann Esterházy, with four soloists and a choir of 12. Mozart's arrangement, with minor amendments from Hiller, was published in 1803, after his death. The musical scholar
Moritz HauptmannMoritz Hauptmann , was a German music theorist, teacher and composer.Hauptmann was born in Dresden, and studied violin under Scholz, piano under Franz Lanska, composition under Grosse and Francesco Morlacchi,...
described the Mozart additions as "
stuccoStucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...
ornaments on a marble temple". Elements of this version later became familiar to British audiences, incorporated into editions of the score by editors including
Ebenezer ProutEbenezer Prout , was an English musical theorist, writer, teacher and composer, whose instruction, afterwards embodied in a series of standard works, underpinned the work of many British musicians of succeeding generations....
.
19th century
In the 19th century, approaches to Handel in German and English-speaking countries diverged further. In Leipzig in 1856, the musicologist
Friedrich ChrysanderKarl Franz Friedrich Chrysander was a German music historian and critic, whose edition of the works of George Frideric Handel and authoritative writings on many other composers established him as a pioneer of 19th-century musicology.Born at Lübtheen, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Chrysander was the son...
and the literary historian
Georg Gottfried GervinusGeorg Gottfried Gervinus was a German literary and political historian.-Biography:Gervinus was born in Darmstadt. He was educated at the gymnasium of the town, and intended for a commercial career, but in 1825 he became a student of the university of Giessen...
founded the Deutsche
Händel-GesellschaftBetween 1858 and 1902, the Händel-Gesellschaft, or "German Handel Society," produced a collected 105-volume edition of the works of Georg Frideric Handel. Even though the collection was initiated by the society, many of the volumes were published by Friedrich Chrysander working alone...
with the aim of publishing authentic editions of all Handel's works. At the same time, performances in Britain and the United States moved away from Handel's performance practice with increasingly grandiose renditions.
Messiah was presented in New York in 1853 with a chorus of 300 and in Boston in 1865 with more than 600.
In Britain a "Great Handel Festival" was held at
the Crystal PalaceThe Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in...
in 1857, performing
Messiah and other Handel oratorios, with a chorus of 2,000 singers and an orchestra of 500.
In the 1860s and 1870s ever larger forces were assembled.
Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, in his role as a music critic, commented, "The stale wonderment which the great chorus never fails to elicit has already been exhausted"; he later wrote, "Why, instead of wasting huge sums on the multitudinous dullness of a Handel Festival does not somebody set up a thoroughly rehearsed and exhaustively studied performance of the Messiah in
St James's HallSt. James's Hall was a concert hall in London that opened on 25 March 1858, designed by architect and artist Owen Jones, who had decorated the interior of the Crystal Palace. It was situated between the Quadrant in Regent Street and Piccadilly, and Vine Street and George Court. There was a...
with a chorus of twenty capable artists? Most of us would be glad to hear the work seriously performed once before we die." The employment of huge forces necessitated considerable augmentation of the orchestral parts. Many admirers of Handel believed that the composer would have made such additions, had the appropriate instruments been available in his day. Shaw argued, largely unheeded, that "the composer may be spared from his friends, and the function of writing or selecting 'additional orchestral accompaniments' exercised with due discretion."
One reason for the popularity of huge-scale performances was the ubiquity of amateur choral societies. The conductor
Sir Thomas BeechamSir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
wrote that for 200 years the chorus was "the national medium of musical utterance" in Britain. However, after the heyday of Victorian choral societies, he noted a "rapid and violent reaction against monumental performances ... an appeal from several quarters that Handel should be played and heard as in the days between 1700 and 1750". At the end of the century,
Sir Frederick BridgeSir John Frederick Bridge was an English organist, composer, teacher and writer.From a musical family, Bridge became a church organist before he was 20, and he achieved his ambition to become a cathedral organist by the age of 24, at Manchester Cathedral...
and T. W. Bourne pioneered revivals of
Messiah in Handel's orchestration, and Bourne's work was the basis for further scholarly versions in the early 20th century.
20th century and beyond
Although the huge-scale oratorio tradition was perpetuated by such large ensembles as the
Royal Choral SocietyThe Royal Choral Society is an amateur choir, based in London. Formed soon after the opening of the Royal Albert Hall in 1871, the choir gave its first performance as the Royal Albert Hall Choral Society on 8 May 1872 – the choir's first conductor Charles Gounod included the Hallelujah Chorus from...
, the
Mormon Tabernacle ChoirThe Mormon Tabernacle Choir, sometimes colloquially referred to as MoTab, is a Grammy and Emmy Award winning, 360-member, all-volunteer choir. The choir is part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . However, the choir is completely self-funded, traveling and producing albums to...
and the
Huddersfield Choral SocietyHuddersfield Choral Society is an internationally famous choir based in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1836, and is recognised as one of Britain's leading choirs...
in the 20th century, there were increasingly calls for performances more faithful to Handel's conception. At the turn of the century,
The Musical TimesThe Musical Times is an academic journal of classical music edited and produced in the United Kingdom. It is currently the oldest such journal that is still publishing in the UK, having been published continuously since 1844. It was published as The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular until...
wrote of the "additional accompaniments" of Mozart and others, "Is it not time that some of these 'hangers on' of Handel's score were sent about their business?" In 1902, the musicologist Ebenezer Prout produced a new edition of the score, working from Handel's original manuscripts rather than from corrupt printed versions with errors accumulated from one edition to another. However, Prout started from the assumption that a faithful reproduction of Handel's original score would not be practical:
Prout continued the practice of adding flutes, clarinets and trombones to Handel's orchestration, but he restored Handel's high trumpet parts, which Mozart had omitted (evidently because playing them was a lost art by 1789). There was little dissent from Prout's approach, and when Chrysander's scholarly edition was published in the same year, it was received respectfully as "a volume for the study" rather than a performing edition, being an edited reproduction of various of Handel's manuscript versions. An authentic performance was thought impossible:
The Musical Times correspondent wrote, "Handel's orchestral instruments were all (excepting the trumpet) of a coarser quality than those at present in use; his harpsichords are gone for ever … the places in which he performed the 'Messiah' were mere drawing-rooms when compared with the
Albert HallThe Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
, the
Queen's HallThe Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect T.E. Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it was the home of the promenade concerts founded by Robert...
and the Crystal Palace. In Australia,
The RegisterThe Register, originally the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, was the first South Australian newspaper. It was first published in London in June 1836 and folded almost a century later in February 1931....
protested at the prospect of performances by "trumpery little church choirs of 20 voices or so".
In Germany,
Messiah was not so often performed as in Britain; when it was given, medium-sized forces were the norm. At the Handel Festival held in 1922 in Handel's native town, Halle, his choral works were given by a choir of 163 and an orchestra of 64. In Britain, innovative broadcasting and recording contributed to reconsideration of Handelian performance. For example, in 1928, Beecham conducted a recording of
Messiah with modestly sized forces and controversially brisk tempi, although the orchestration remained far from authentic. In 1934 and 1935, the
BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
broadcast performances of
Messiah conducted by
Adrian BoultSir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...
with "a faithful adherence to Handel's clear scoring." A performance with authentic scoring was given in
Worcester CathedralWorcester Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in Worcester, England; situated on a bank overlooking the River Severn. It is the seat of the Anglican Bishop of Worcester. Its official name is The Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Mary the Virgin of Worcester...
as part of the
Three Choirs FestivalThe Three Choirs Festival is a music festival held each August alternately at the cathedrals of the Three Counties and originally featuring their three choirs, which remain central to the week-long programme...
in 1935. In 1950 John Tobin conducted a performance of
Messiah in
St Paul's CathedralSt Paul's Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral and seat of the Bishop of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. St Paul's sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, and is the mother...
with the orchestral forces specified by the composer, a choir of 60, a counter-tenor alto soloist, and modest attempts at vocal elaboration of the printed notes, in the manner of Handel's day. The Prout version sung with many voices remained popular with British choral societies, but at the same time increasingly frequent performances were given by small professional ensembles in suitably sized venues, using authentic scoring. Recordings on LP and CD were preponderantly of the latter type, and the large scale
Messiah came to seem old-fashioned.
The cause of authentic performance was advanced in 1965 by the publication of a new edition of the score, edited by
Watkins ShawHarold Watkins Shaw, OBE, known as Watkins Shaw , was a British musicologist and educator best known for his critical edition of Handel's Messiah compiled between 1957 and 1965, which version has largely supplanted that of Ebenezer Prout in British performance - The Times obituarist went so far as...
. In the
Grove Dictionary of Music and MusiciansThe New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is the largest single reference work on Western music. The dictionary has gone through several editions since the 19th century...
, David Scott writes, "the edition at first aroused suspicion on account of its attempts in several directions to break the crust of convention surrounding the work in the British Isles." By the time of Shaw's death in 1996,
The Times described his edition as "now in universal use".
Messiah remains Handel's best-known work, with performances particularly popular during the Christmas season; writing in December 1993, the music critic Alex Ross refers to that month's 21 performances in New York alone as "numbing repetition". Against the general trend towards authenticity, the work has been staged in opera houses, both in London (2009) and in Paris (2011). The Mozart score is revived from time to time, and in
AnglophoneAnglosphere is a neologism which refers to those nations with English as the most common language. The term can be used more specifically to refer to those nations which share certain characteristics within their cultures based on a linguistic heritage, through being former British colonies...
countries "
singalongA Scratch Messiah, People's Messiah, Come Sing Messiah, Sing-it-yourself Messiah, or Sing along Messiah is an informal performance of Handel's Messiah in which the audience serves as the unrehearsed chorus, often supported by a carefully prepared core group...
" performances with many hundreds of performers are popular. Although performances striving for authenticity are now usual, it is generally agreed that there can never be a definitive version of
Messiah; the surviving manuscripts contain radically different settings of many numbers, and vocal and instrumental ornamentation of the written notes is a matter of personal judgment, even for the most historically informed performers. The Handel scholar
Winton DeanWinton Dean is an English musicologist of the 20th century, most famous for his research concerning the life and works—in particular the operas and oratorios—of Handel, as detailed in his book Handel’s Dramatic Oratorios and Masques .Dean was born in Birkenhead...
has written:
Organisation and numbering of movements
The numbering of the movements shown here is in accordance with the Novello vocal score (1959), edited by Watkins Shaw, which adapts the numbering earlier devised by Ebenezer Prout. Other editions count the movements slightly differently; the
BärenreiterBärenreiter is a German classical music publishing house based in Kassel. The firm was founded by Karl Vötterle in Augsburg in 1923, and moved to Kassel in 1927, where it still maintains headquarters; it also has offices in Basel, London, New York and Prague...
edition of 1972, for example, does not number all the
recitativeRecitative , also known by its Italian name "recitativo" , is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech...
s and runs from 1 to 47. The division into parts and scenes is based on the 1743 word-book prepared for the first London performance. The scene headings are given as Burrows summarised the scene headings by Jennens.
Part I
Scene 1: Isaiah's prophecy of salvation
- 1. Sinfony (instrumental)
- 2. Comfort ye my people (tenor)
- 3. Every valley shall be exalted (tenor)
- 4. And the glory of the Lord (chorus)
Scene 2: The coming judgment
- 5. Thus saith the Lord (bass)
- 6. But who may abide the day of his coming (alto)
- 7. And he shall purify (chorus)
Scene 3: The prophecy of Christ's birth
- 8. Behold, a virgin shall conceive alto)
- 9. O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion (alto and chorus)
- 10. For behold, darkness shall cover the earth (bass)
- 11. The people that walked in darkness (bass)
- 12. For unto us a child is born (chorus)
Scene 4: The annunciation to the shepherds
- 13. Pifa ("pastoral symphony": instrumental)
- 14a. There were shepherds abiding in the fields (soprano)
- 14b. And lo, the angel of the Lord (soprano)
- 15. And the angel said unto them (soprano)
- 16. And suddenly there was with the angel (soprano)
- 17. Glory to God (chorus)
Scene 5: Christ's healing and redemption
- 18. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion (soprano)
- 19. Then shall the eyes of the blind (soprano)
- 20. He shall feed his flock (alto and soprano)
- 21. His yoke is easy (chorus)
Part II
Scene 1: Christ's Passion
- 22. Behold the Lamb of God (chorus)
- 23. He was despised (alto)
- 24. Surely he has borne our griefs (chorus)
- 25. And with his stripes we are healed (chorus)
- 26. All we like sheep have gone astray (chorus)
- 27. All they that see him laugh him to scorn (tenor)
- 28. He trusted in God (chorus)
- 29. Thy rebuke hath broken his heart (tenor or soprano)
- 30. Behold and see if there be any sorrow (tenor or soprano)
Scene 2: Christ's Death and Resurrection
- 31. He was cut off (tenor or soprano)
- 32. But thou didst not leave his soul in hell (tenor or soprano)
Scene 3: Christ's Ascension
- 33. Lift up your heads, O ye gates (chorus)
Scene 4: Christ's reception in Heaven
- 34. Unto which of the angels (tenor)
- 35. Let all the angels of God (chorus)
Scene 5: The beginnings of Gospel preaching
- 36. Thou art gone up on high (soprano)
- 37. The Lord gave the word (chorus)
- 38. How beautiful are the feet (soprano)
- 39. Their sound is gone out (chorus)
Scene 6: The world's rejection of the Gospel
- 40. Why do the nations so furiously rage together (bass)
- 41. Let us break their bonds asunder (chorus)
- 42. He that dwelleth in heaven (tenor)
Scene 7: God's ultimate victory
- 43. Thou shalt break them (tenor)
- 44. Hallelujah Chorus
Part III
Scene 1: The promise of eternal life
- 45. I know that my Redeemer liveth (soprano)
- 46. Since by man came death (chorus)
Scene 2: The Day of Judgment
- 47. Behold, I tell you a mystery (bass)
- 48. The trumpet shall sound (bass)
Scene 3: The final conquest of sin
- 49. Then shall be brought to pass (alto)
- 50. O death, where is thy sting (alto and tenor)
- 51. But thanks be to God (chorus)
- 52. If God be for us (soprano)
Scene 4: The acclamation of the Messiah
- 53. Worthy is the Lamb (chorus)
-
- Amen (chorus)
Overview
Handel's music for
Messiah is distinguished from most of his other oratorios by an orchestral restraint—a quality which the musicologist
Percy M. YoungPercy Marshall Young was a British musicologist, editor, organist, composer, conductor and teacher.Young was born in Northwich, Cheshire. From 1934 to 1937 he was a Director of Music at Stranmillis Teacher Training College in Belfast. From 1937 to 1944, Young was a Musical Adviser to...
observes was not adopted by Mozart and other later arrangers of the music. The work begins quietly, with instrumental and solo movements preceding the first appearance of the chorus, whose entry in the low alto register is muted. A particular aspect of Handel's restraint is his limited use of trumpets throughout the work. After their introduction in the Part I chorus "Glory to God", apart from the solo in "The trumpets shall sound" they are heard only in "Hallelujah" and the final chorus "Worthy is the Lamb". It is this rarity, says Young, that makes these brass interpolations particularly effective: "Increase them and the thrill is diminished". In "Glory to God", Handel marked the entry of the trumpets as
da lontano e un poco piano, meaning "quietly, from afar"; his original intention had been to place the brass offstage (
in disparte) at this point, to highlight the effect of distance. In this initial appearance the trumpets lack the expected drum accompaniment, "a deliberate withholding of effect, leaving something in reserve for Parts II and III" according to Luckett.
Although
Messiah is not in any particular key, Handel's tonal scheme has been summarised by the musicologist
Anthony HicksAnthony Hicks was a Welsh musicologist, music critic, editor, and writer.Born in Swansea, Hicks read mathematics at King's College London during the mid-1960s and worked for roughly a quarter of century as a computer systems analyst at the University of London...
as "an aspiration towards D major", the key musically associated with light and glory. As the oratorio moves forward with various shifts in key to reflect changes in mood, D major emerges at significant points, primarily the "trumpet" movements with their uplifting messages. It is the key in which the work reaches its triumphant ending. In the absence of a predominant key, other integrating elements have been proposed. For example, the musicologist Rudolf Steglich has suggested that Handel used the device of the "ascending
fourthIn classical music from Western culture, a fourth is a musical interval encompassing four staff positions , and the perfect fourth is a fourth spanning five semitones. For example, the ascending interval from C to the next F is a perfect fourth, as the note F lies five semitones above C, and there...
" as a unifying
motifIn music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....
; this device most noticeably occurs in the first two notes of "I know that my Redeemer liveth" and on numerous other occasions. Nevertheless, Luckett finds this thesis implausible, and asserts that "the unity of
Messiah is a consequence of nothing more arcane than the quality of Handel's attention to his text, and the consistency of his musical imagination".
Allan Kozinn-Biography:He received bachelor's degrees in music and journalism from Syracuse University in 1976. He began freelancing as a critic and music feature writer for the New York Times in 1977, and joined the paper's staff in 1991...
,
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
music critic, finds "a model marriage of music and text ... From the gentle falling melody assigned to the opening words ("Comfort ye") to the sheer ebullience of the "Hallelujah" chorus and the ornate celebratory counterpoint that supports the closing "Amen", hardly a line of text goes by that Handel does not amplify".
Part I
The opening
Sinfony is composed in E minor for strings, and is Handel's first use in oratorio of the
French overtureThe French overture is a musical form widely used in the Baroque period. Its basic formal division is into two parts, which are usually enclosed by double bars and repeat signs. They are complementary in styles , and the first ends with a half-cadence that requires an answering structure with a...
form. Jennens commented that the
Sinfony contains "passages far unworthy of Handel, but much more unworthy of the Messiah"; Handel's early biographer
Charles BurneyCharles Burney FRS was an English music historian and father of authors Frances Burney and Sarah Burney.-Life and career:...
merely found it "dry and uninteresting". A change of key to E major leads to the first prophecy, delivered by the tenor whose vocal line in the opening recitative "Comfort ye" is entirely independent of the strings accompaniment. The music proceeds through various key changes as the prophecies unfold, culminating in the G major chorus "For unto us a child is born", in which the choral exclamations (which include an ascending fourth in "the Mighty God") are imposed on material drawn from Handel's Italian cantata
Nò, di voi non vo'fidarmi. Such passages, says the music historian
Donald Jay GroutDonald Jay Grout was an American musicologist.Grout attended Syracuse University and graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1923. He took his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1939...
, "reveal Handel the dramatist, the unerring master of dramatic effect".
The pastoral interlude that follows begins with the short instrumental movement, the
Pifa, which takes its name from the shepherd-bagpipers, or
pifferare, who played their pipes in the streets of Rome at Christmas time. Handel wrote the movement in both 11-bar and extended 32-bar forms; according to Burrows, either will work in performance. The group of four short recitatives which follow it introduce the soprano soloist—although often the earlier aria "But who may abide" is sung by the soprano in its transposed G minor form. The final recitative of this section is in D major and heralds the affirmative chorus "Glory to God". The remainder of Part I is largely carried by the soprano in B flat, in what Burrows terms a rare instance of tonal stability. The aria "He shall feed his flock" underwent several transformations by Handel, appearing at different times as a recitative, an alto aria and a duet for alto and soprano before the original soprano version was restored in 1754. The appropriateness of the Italian source material for the setting of the solemn concluding chorus "His yoke is easy" has been questioned by the music scholar Sedley Taylor, who calls it "a piece of word-painting ... grieviously out of place", though he concedes that the four-part choral conclusion is a stroke of genius that combines beauty with dignity.
Part II
The second Part begins in G minor, a key which, in Hogwood's phrase, brings a mood of "tragic presentiment" to the long sequence of Passion numbers which follows. The declamatory opening chorus "Behold the Lamb of God", in fugal form, is followed by the alto solo "He was despised" in E flat major, the longest single item in the oratorio, in which some phrases are sung unaccompanied to emphasise Christ's abandonment. Luckett records Burney's description of this number as "the highest idea of excellence in pathetic expression of any English song". The subsequent series of mainly short choral movements cover Christ's Passion, Crucifixion, Death and Resurrection, at first in F minor, with a brief F major respite in "All we like sheep". Here, Handel's use of
Nò, di voi non vo'fidarmi has Sedley Taylor's unqualified approval: "[Handel] bids the voices enter in solemn canonical sequence, and his chorus ends with a combination of grandeur and depth of feeling such as is at the command of consummate genius only".
The sense of desolation returns, in what Hogwood calls the "remote and barbarous" key of B flat minor, for the tenor recitative "All they that see him". The sombre sequence finally ends with the Ascension chorus "Lift up your heads", which Handel initially divides between two choral groups, the altos serving both as the bass line to a soprano choir and the treble line to the tenors and basses. For the 1754 Foundling Hospital performance Handel added two horns, which join in when the chorus unites towards the end of the number. After the celebratory tone of Christ's reception into heaven, marked by the choir's D major acclamation "Let all the angels of God worship him", the "
WhitsunPentecost is a prominent feast in the calendar of Ancient Israel celebrating the giving of the Law on Sinai, and also later in the Christian liturgical year commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ after the Resurrection of Jesus...
" section proceeds through a series of contrasting moods—serene and pastoral in "How beautiful are the feet", theatrically operatic in "Why do the nations so furiously rage"—towards the Part II culmination of "Hallelujah". This, as Young points out, is not the climactic chorus of the work, although one cannot escape its "contagious enthusiasm". It builds from a deceptively light orchestral opening, through a short, unison
cantus firmusIn music, a cantus firmus is a pre-existing melody forming the basis of a polyphonic composition.The plural of this Latin term is , though the corrupt form canti firmi is also attested...
passage on the words "For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth", to the reappearance of the long-silent trumpets at "And He shall reign for ever and ever". Commentators have noted that the musical line for this third subject is based on
Wachet aufWachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140, also known as Sleepers Wake, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, written in Leipzig for the 27th Sunday after Trinity and first performed on November 25, 1731.-History and text:...
,
Philipp NicolaiPhilipp Nicolai was a German Lutheran pastor, poet, and composer, author of two famous hymns: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme and Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern...
's popular
LutheranLutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation...
choraleA chorale was originally a hymn sung by a Christian congregation. In certain modern usage, this term may also include classical settings of such hymns and works of a similar character....
.
Part III
The opening soprano solo in E major, "I know that my Redeemer liveth" is one of the few numbers in the oratorio that has remained unrevised from its original form. its simple unison violin accompaniment and its consoling rhythms apparently brought tears to Burney's eyes. It is followed by a quiet chorus that leads to the bass's declamation in D major: "Behold, I tell you a mystery", then the long aria "The trumpet shall sound", marked
pomposo ma non allegro ("dignified but not fast"). Handel originally wrote this in
da capoDa Capo is a musical term in Italian, meaning from the beginning . It is often abbreviated D.C. It is a composer or publisher's directive to repeat the previous part of music, often used to save space. In small pieces this might be the same thing as a repeat, but in larger works D.C...
form, but shortened it to
dal segnoIn music notation, Dal segno is used as a navigation marker. From Italian for "from the sign," D.S. appears in sheet music and instructs a musician to repeat a passage starting from the sign shown at right, sometimes called the "segno" in English.Two common variants:*D.S...
, probably before the first performance. The extended trumpet fanfare that precedes and accompanies the voice is the only significant instrumental solo in the entire oratorio. Handel's awkward, repeated stressing of the fourth syllable of "incorruptible" may have been the source of the 18th century poet
William ShenstoneWilliam Shenstone was an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes.-Life:...
's comment that he "could observe some parts in
MessiahA messiah is a redeemer figure expected or foretold in one form or another by a religion. Slightly more widely, a messiah is any redeemer figure. Messianic beliefs or theories generally relate to eschatological improvement of the state of humanity or the world, in other words the World to...
wherein Handel's judgements failed him; where the music was not equal, or was even
opposite, to what the words required". After a brief solo recitative, the alto is joined by the tenor for the only duet in Handel's final version of the music, "O death, where is thy sting?" The melody is adapted from Handel's 1722 cantata
Se tu non lasci amore, and is in Luckett's view the most successful of the Italian borrowings. The duet runs straight into the chorus "But thanks be to God".
The reflective soprano solo "If God be for us" (originally written for alto) quotes
LutherMartin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
's chorale
Aus tiefer NotAus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir , BWV 38, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach composed the chorale cantata in Leipzig in 1724 in his second annual cycle for the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity and first performed it on 19 October 1724...
. It ushers in the D major choral finale: "Worthy is the Lamb", leading to the apocalyptic "Amen" in which, says Hogwood, "the entry of the trumpets marks the final storming of heaven". Handel's first biographer,
John MainwaringJohn Mainwaring was an English theologian and the first biographer of the composer Georg Friedrich Händel in any language. He was a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and became rector of the parish of Church Stretton, Shropshire, and, later professor of Divinity at Cambridge...
, wrote in 1760 that this conclusion revealed the composer "rising still higher" than in "that vast effort of genius, the Hallelujah chorus". Young writes that the "Amen" should, in the manner of
PalestrinaGiovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...
, "be delivered as though through the aisles and ambulatories of some great church".
Recordings
Many early recordings of individual choruses and arias from
Messiah reflect the performance styles then fashionable—large forces, slow tempi and liberal reorchestration. Typical examples are choruses conducted by
Sir Henry WoodHenry Wood was a British conductor.Henry Wood may also refer to:* Henry C. Wood , American Civil War Medal of Honor recipient* Henry Wood , English cricketer...
, recorded in 1926 for
ColumbiaThe Columbia Graphophone Company was one of the earliest gramophone companies in the United Kingdom. Under EMI, as Columbia Records, it became a very successful label in the 1950s and 1960s...
with the 3,500-strong choir and orchestra of the Crystal Palace Handel Festival, and a contemporary rival disc from HMV featuring the
Royal Choral SocietyThe Royal Choral Society is an amateur choir, based in London. Formed soon after the opening of the Royal Albert Hall in 1871, the choir gave its first performance as the Royal Albert Hall Choral Society on 8 May 1872 – the choir's first conductor Charles Gounod included the Hallelujah Chorus from...
under Malcolm Sargent, recorded at the
Royal Albert HallThe Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
.
The first near-complete recording of the whole work (with the cuts then customary) was conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham in 1928. It represented an effort by Beecham to "provide an interpretation which, in his opinion, was nearer the composer's intentions", with smaller forces and faster tempi than had become traditional. His contralto soloist,
Muriel BrunskillMuriel Brunskill was an English contralto of the mid-twentieth century. Her career included concert, operatic and recital performance from the early 1920s until the 1950s...
, later commented, "His tempi, which are now taken for granted, were revolutionary; he entirely revitalised it". Nevertheless, Sargent retained the large scale tradition in his four HMV recordings, the first in 1946 and three more in the 1950s and 1960s, all with the
Huddersfield Choral SocietyHuddersfield Choral Society is an internationally famous choir based in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England. It was founded in 1836, and is recognised as one of Britain's leading choirs...
and the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Beecham's second recording of the work, in 1947, "led the way towards more truly Handelian rhythms and speeds", according to the critic
Alan BlythGeoffrey Alan Blyth was an English music critic, author, and musicologist who was particularly known for his writings within the field of opera. He graduated from the Rugby School before attending the University of Oxford where he studied with Jack Westrup...
. In a 1991 study of all 76 complete
Messiahs recorded by that date, the writer Teri Noel Towe called this work of Beecham's "one of a handful of truly stellar performances".
In 1954 the first recording based on Handel's original scoring was conducted by
Hermann ScherchenHermann Scherchen was a German conductor.-Life:Scherchen was originally a violist and played among the violas of the Bluthner Orchestra of Berlin while still in his teens...
for
NixaNixa Record Company Ltd. was founded in 1950 by F. H. B. Nixon. Nixa was the second company, after Decca, in Britain to release LP records. At the time, EMI was attempting to promote 45 rpm records over 33 LP records...
; it was quickly followed by another version, judged scholarly at the time, under Sir Adrian Boult for
DeccaDecca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
. By the standards of 21st-century performance, however, Scherchen's and Boult's tempi were still slow, and there was no attempt at vocal ornamentation by the soloists. In 1966 and 1967 two new recordings were regarded as great advances in scholarship and performance practice, conducted respectively by
Colin DavisSir Colin Rex Davis, CH, CBE is an English conductor. His repertoire is broad, but among the composers with whom he is particularly associated are Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett....
for
PhilipsPhilips Records is a record label that was founded by Dutch electronics company Philips. It was started by "Philips Phonographische Industrie" in 1950. Recordings were made with popular artists of various nationalities and also with classical artists from Germany, France and Holland. Philips also...
and
Charles MackerrasSir Alan Charles Maclaurin Mackerras, AC, CH, CBE was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan...
for HMV. They inaugurated a new tradition of brisk, small scale performances, with vocal embellishments by the solo singers. Among the last notable recordings of older-style performances were Beecham's final, extravagantly reorchestrated version made for
RCARCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
in 1959; one conducted by Karl Richter for
DGDeutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label...
in 1973, though it used authentic orchestration; and a third based on Prout's 1902 edition of the score, with a 325-voice choir and 90-piece orchestra conducted by Sir David Willcocks in 1995.
By the end of the 1970s the quest for authenticity had extended to the use of period instruments and historically correct styles of playing them. The first of such versions were conducted by the early music specialists
Christopher HogwoodChristopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood CBE, MA , HonMusD , born 10 September 1941, Nottingham, is an English conductor, harpsichordist, writer and musicologist, well known as the founder of the Academy of Ancient Music.-Biography:...
(1979) and
John Eliot GardinerSir John Eliot Gardiner CBE FKC is an English conductor. He founded the Monteverdi Choir , the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique...
(1982). The use of period instruments quickly became the norm on record, although conductors such as
Sir Georg SoltiSir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his...
(1985) and
Sir Neville MarrinerSir Neville Marriner is an English conductor and violinist.-Biography:Marriner was born in Lincoln and studied at the Royal College of Music and the Paris Conservatoire. He played the violin in the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Martin String Quartet and London Symphony Orchestra, playing with the...
(1993) continued to favour modern instruments.
Gramophone magazine and
The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical MusicThe Penguin Guide To Recorded Classical Music is a widely-distributed annual publication from Britain published by Penguin Books, reviewing and rating currently available recordings of classical music...
highlighted two versions, conducted respectively by
Trevor PinnockTrevor David Pinnock CBE is an English conductor, harpsichordist, and occasional organist and pianist.He is best known for his association with the period-performance orchestra The English Concert which he helped found and directed from the keyboard for over 30 years in baroque and early classical...
(1988) and
Richard HickoxRichard Sidney Hickox CBE was an English conductor of choral, orchestral and operatic music.-Early life:Hickox was born in Stokenchurch in Buckinghamshire into a musical family...
(1992). The latter employs a chorus of 24 singers and an orchestra of 31 players; Handel is known to have used a chorus of 19 and an orchestra of 37. Performances on an even smaller scale have followed.
Several reconstructions of early performances have been recorded: the 1742 Dublin version by
Jean-Claude MalgoireJean-Claude Malgoire is a French conductor.He was born in Avignon, France and studied music locally and at the Paris Conservatory. His early musical career was as an oboist....
in 1980 and several recordings of the 1754 Foundling Hospital version, including those under Hogwood (1979),
Andrew ParrottAndrew Parrott is a British conductor, perhaps best known for his pioneering historically informed performances of pre-classical music. He conducts a wide range of repertoire, including contemporary music. He conducted the premiere of Judith Weir's A Night at the Chinese Opera...
(1989), and Paul McCreesh. Unorthodox adaptations have included a late 1950s recording conducted by
Leonard BernsteinLeonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
of his own edition which regrouped and reordered the numbers into a "Christmas section" and an "Easter section". In 1973 David Willcocks conducted a set for HMV in which all the soprano arias were sung in unison by the boys of the
Choir of King's College, CambridgeThe Choir of King's College, Cambridge is one of today's most accomplished and renowned representatives of the great British choral tradition. It was created by King Henry VI, who founded King's College, Cambridge in 1441, to provide daily singing in his Chapel, which remains the main task of the...
, and in 1974, for DG, Mackerras conducted a set of Mozart's reorchestrated version, sung in German.
Editions
The first published score of 1767, together with Handel's documented adaptations and recompositions of various movements, has been the basis for many performing versions since the composer's lifetime. Modern performances which seek authenticity tend to be based on one of three 20th-century performing editions. These all use different methods of numbering movements:
- The Novello Edition, edited by Watkins Shaw, first published as a vocal score in 1959, revised and issued 1965. This uses the numbering first used in the Prout edition of 1902.
- The Bärenreiter Edition, edited by John Tobin, published in 1965, which forms the basis of the Messiah numbering in Bernd Baselt
Bernd Baselt was a German musical scholar noted for his works on the composer Handel. He was a professor of music at the University of Halle....
's catalogue (HWV) of Handel's works, published in 1984.
- The Peters Edition, edited by Donald Burrows, vocal score published 1972, which uses an adaptation of the numbering devised by Kurt Soldan.
The edition edited by
Friedrich ChrysanderKarl Franz Friedrich Chrysander was a German music historian and critic, whose edition of the works of George Frideric Handel and authoritative writings on many other composers established him as a pioneer of 19th-century musicology.Born at Lübtheen, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Chrysander was the son...
and
Max SeiffertMax Seiffert was a German musicologist and music arranger.-Biography:Seiffert was born in Beeskow an der Spree, Germany; and died in Schleswig, Germany. He was first educated at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium at Berlin, and then at the University of Berlin where he received a Ph.D. in 1891 for the...
for the
Deutsche Händel-GesellschaftBetween 1858 and 1902, the Händel-Gesellschaft, or "German Handel Society," produced a collected 105-volume edition of the works of Georg Frideric Handel. Even though the collection was initiated by the society, many of the volumes were published by Friedrich Chrysander working alone...
(Berlin, 1902) is not a general performing edition, but has been used as a basis of scholarship and research.
Sources
CD 09026-61266-2 (Origins and the present performance, Edition de L'Oiseau-Lyre 430 488–2) (Notes on the music, Edition de L'Oiseau-Lyre 430 488–2)
External links
- For the full text, scriptural references and sound samples, see Messiah on Wikisource
- Handel's Messiah at the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities