Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season November-December 2015 | Page 33

program notes {
Beginning the work on August 22, 1741,
he completed the two-and-a-half-hour
oratorio in just over three weeks. Besides
inspiration from God, he also had a little
practical assistance in this huge task.
Like most Baroque composers (Bach
included), Handel did not hesitate to
borrow from his own earlier works if they
were suitable for use here. Three of the
choruses in Part I —“He shall purify,”
“His yoke is easy,” and even the famous
“For unto us a child is born”— are based
on music he’d originally composed as
Italian vocal duets.
Messiah was introduced to the world in
Dublin, Ireland on April 13, 1742, during
Holy Week (the tradition of performing
it during the Christmas season is fairly
recent). At the invitation of the Duke
of Devonshire, the Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland, Handel had been presenting concerts of his works there since the previous
November and winning the kind of warm
response that had been eluding him in
London. On that Tuesday, Neal’s Musick
Hall was packed beyond its capacity;
audience members had been specifically
requested to leave their swords and hoop
shirts at home in order to fit more people
into the hall.

Messiah was introduced to
the world in Dublin, Ireland
on April 13, 1742, during
Holy Week.
The Dublin audience responded with
enormous enthusiasm to the new work,
and another performance was quickly
scheduled. But when Handel brought
Messiah to London in March 1743,
attendance was disappointing and the
critics unkind. A subsequent Handel
oratorio, Samson, was much preferred.
Much of Messiah’s failure was caused
by a heated controversy that broke out
in the city about whether such a serious
sacred subject ought to be presented as an
“entertainment” in secular concert halls.
Receiving few subsequent performances,
the oratorio went back on Handel’s shelf.

By 1749, when Handel was 64, the
trustees of London’s Foundling Hospital
invited him to present Messiah there at
a charitable fundraising concert. This
time the oratorio aroused no controversy, more than 1,000 people attended,
and for the first time Messiah enjoyed a
London triumph. From then on, annual
performances during the Lenten season
became a London tradition, soon spreading throughout Europe. Now Handel
was finally acknowledged as England’s
leading musical citizen, and he lived
long enough — until 1759 — to be able
to savor the success of the work he loved
so dearly.
LISTENING TO MESSIAH

Messiah’s heroic journey is divided into
three parts. Part I revolves around the
Old Testament prophecies (emphasizing the Book of Isaiah) of the Messiah’s
coming and culminates with his birth
as told in the Gospel of Luke. Indeed
more of Messiah’s text is drawn from the
Old Testament than the New, and, apart
from the Nativity story, the Gospel histories are seldom used. Thus, the emphasis
falls on the broader meaning of Christ’s
redemption of the human race rather
than on the details of Jesus’ life.
Part II meditates on human sinfulness,
the Messiah’s rejection and suffering,
and his sacrifice to redeem humankind;
it concludes with that famous song of
praise and triumph, the “Hallelujah”
Chorus. Finally moving into the New
Testament, Part III tells of the Messiah’s
vanquishing of death and the promise of
everlasting joy for the believer.
Handel did not leave behind a definitive
version of Messiah. Instead, he reworked
numbers and re-assigned arias to different
voice categories depending on the soloists
available for each performance. Messiah’s
solo sections are divided between recitatives, which place greater emphasis on
delivery of the words, and arias, in which
musical values and the showcasing of the
singer’s technical prowess take precedence.
The tenor’s two opening numbers are a
good example: “Comfort Ye, My People”
is an accompanied recitative and “Every
Valley” is an aria.

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NOVEMBER– DECEMBER 2015 |

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