Program Notes: Handel's Messiah (2023)

George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is, like no other piece of music, part of the public domain — not in the usual sense of being free from copyright restriction, but in that it provides one of the most widely shared musical experiences in our culture. Each year, the oratorio is sung by tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of people in choral societies and “sing alongs.” Its audience at these performances, and through broadcasts and recordings, is incalculable. Handel’s music is, moreover, indelibly part of our shared musical consciousness, the “Hallelujah” chorus in particular eliciting a level of recognition and emotional response achieved otherwise only by the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. No other composition is more generally familiar or more loved. 

Born in the German city of Halle, and having honed his musical skill during a four-year sojourn in Italy, Handel had established himself in London, beginning in 1710, as a highly successful composer of opera, which was then a popular form of entertainment among the English nobility. His triumphs in that field brought him wealth and celebrity. But by the late 1720s, the English had started to tire of the contrived plots and outlandish theatricality that characterized opera at that time, and in the middle of the next decade, Handel began to look to a new type of work: the oratorio. This was less costly to present than opera yet had the potential to appeal to a broader audience drawn from the rising English middle class. Scored for solo voices, chorus and orchestra, Handel’s oratorios related classical legends and Old Testament stories, the latter often told through extracts from the scriptures. In this genre, too, Handel scored notable successes and his fame continued to spread. 

In 1741, Handel received an invitation to present a series of concerts in Dublin during the coming season. The offer was extended by several musical societies in the Irish capital — organizations which, in those days, existed for the dual purpose of maintaining the city’s concert life and raising funds for charitable purposes. Handel was already known for his generous support of several relief organizations, most famously the Foundling Hospital in London. It was understood that in Dublin, he would donate his services for certain benefit concerts while the proceeds of others would accrue to him. 

This opportunity spurred Handel to composition, the subject of his efforts being a new oratorio text recently compiled for him by Charles Jennens, a writer who had already fashioned the librettos for two of his earlier works of this kind. All of Jennens’ verses were judicious selections from the scriptures, but Messiah, as the new work was called, was unlike any of Handel’s previous biblical oratorios. Among other novelties, its subject was the story of Christ, once thought too sacred for a genre considered so close to the theater as oratorio. (The words “theatrical” and “profane” were then virtually synonymous in many quarters.) 

After Handel’s death, a legend arose that he had been seized by a kind of divine rapture while setting the text. This story cannot, of course, be verified. But we can be sure of a high level of inspiration. Handel began writing Messiah on August 22, 1741, and finished it 24 days later, on September 12. Even knowing that he habitually composed rapidly, and allowing that he adapted certain passages from other works, this is an astonishing achievement. 

That November, Handel arrived in Dublin, the score of Messiah in his trunk. After presiding at a well-attended charity event, he quickly scheduled a set of six concerts of his own. These proved so successful that he booked another series in the early months of 1742. All the while he held his new oratorio in reserve. The first performance finally took place on April 13 as a benefit “for the relief of the prisoners in the several Gaols, and for the support of Mercer’s Hospital in Stephen’s Street, and of the Charitable Infirmary.” The Dublin Journal reported that “the best Judges allowed it to be the most finished piece of Musick [sic]. Words are wanting to express the exquisite Delight it afforded to the admiring crouded Audience [sic].” 

Today, Messiah continues to bring listeners “exquisite delight.” Although it is a perennial fixture of the Christmas season, particularly in the United States, only six of some 50 numbers that compose Messiah are devoted to the account of the Nativity related in the Gospel of Luke. The others concern the prophecy of Christ’s coming, death and resurrection. Remarkably, all this is conveyed without the usual dramatic devices of oratorio. Neither Jesus nor any other character is actually represented on stage, and consequently there is no actual dialogue. Instead, the text combines narration and contemplative passages in a brisk and effective yet highly poetic manner.   

The musical riches of Messiah are too numerous and familiar to detail. Its overture is one of the composer’s finest. The arias, as has been often observed, are close in style to those of Handel’s operas and they evince a fine feel for the dramatic nuances of the text, a sensibility that extends to suggestive figuration depicting the flight of angels, the shaking of all nations and more. But above all, it is the great choral movements that make Messiah so stirring. The famous story of how King George II rose to his feet in admiration during the “Hallelujah” chorus — prompting those present and generations since to do likewise — is but one testament to their power. 

Messiah is not, of course a liturgical work nor even a church composition, and it in no way disparages those venerable musical genres to say that the music’s wide appeal stems from the fact that it transcends their comparatively narrow aims. Handel’s intent was not to preach but to draw his listeners into a story whose rich emotional content gives it universal significance. An innately dramatic composer, he intuitively felt that by fusing music with drama, as Messiah does in a special way, he could reach the widest possible audience. The oratorio’s enduring favor affirms his judgment. 

Paul Schiavo (c) 2023