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Messiah:
About The Work
lt was Gay and Pepusch's
satirical romp of 1729, The Beggar's Opera,
that first soured the fashionable London
taste for what Samuel Johnson described in
his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language
as "an exotic and irrational entertainment"
- Italian opera. As both composer and
impresario, Handel was London's most
important producer of opera, and he toiled
doggedly for the entire decade of the 1730s
to keep his theatrical ventures solvent, but
the tide of fashion (and the virulent cabals
of his competitors) brought him to the edge
of bankruptcy by 1739. As early as 1732,
with the oratorio Esther, he had begun to
cast about for a musical genre that would
appeal to the changing fancy of the English
public. Neither that work nor the oratorio
Alexander's Feast of 1736 had the success
that he had hoped, however, and the strain
of his situation resulted in the collapse of
his health in 1737, reported variously as a
stroke or as acute rheumatism and
depression. Much to the surprise and chagrin
of his enemies, he recovered (he was often
lucky with his health - a metal frock button
deflected a sword point in a duel when he
was young, saving his life), and resumed
work. The oratorios Israel in Egypt and Saul
appeared in 1739, but created little public
stir. Determined to have one last try at
saving Italian opera in London, he spent the
summer of 1740 arranging production details
and searching for singers on the Continent
for his upcoming winter season. After
returning to England in early autumn, he
completed what proved to be his last two
operas, both of which failed ignominiously
on the stage. Imeneo, premiered on November
22nd, closed after only two performances;
Deidamia (January 10, 1741), after three.
Handel's publisher, Walsh, despite having
good success selling the recent Op. 6
Concerti Grossi, could not find enough
subscribers to warrant printing the score of
Deidamia. In February, Handel largely
withdrew from public life and he seldom left
his house on Brook Street, near Grosvenor
Square. His rivals rejoiced.
Rumors began to circulate that Handel was
finished in London. Some held that his
health had given way for good; others, that
he had died. The story given greatest
credence, one fueled by Handel's composition
of some Italian duets - pieces largely
useless in London - was that he planned to
return to the Continent. A letter printed in
the London Daily Post on April 4, 1741
called for public support to convince him to
stay. Handel was never one to share his
feelings, so nothing definite is known of
his plans during the early months of 1741.
However, in the summer he suddenly sprang
back to creative life, inspired by a small
book of Biblical texts that had been
compiled by Charles Jennens, a moneyed fop
of artistic pretensions but a sincere
admirer of the composer (his preserved
collection of every score Handel published
on subscription is an important source for
modern researchers) who had earlier supplied
the words for the oratorios Saul and
L'Allegro, il Penseroso e il Moderato, based
on Milton's poem. Handel's imagination was
fired, and he began composing on August
22nd. The stories have it that he shut
himself in his room, eschewing sleep and
leaving food untouched, while he frantically
penned his new work. Twenty-four days later,
on September 14th, he emerged with the
completed score of Messiah. "I did think I
did see Heaven before me and the great God
Himself!" he muttered to a servant.
It was long thought that Handel, a devout
Christian and Bible scholar, composed
Messiah out of sheer religious fervor, with
no thought of an immediate performance. In
his book on Handel, the late scholar of
18th-century music H.C. Robbins Landon
contended that the work was written at the
request of William, Duke of Devonshire, the
Lord Lieutenant of Dublin, who visited
London early in 1741. William, who knew
Handel largely through his sacred vocal
music, apparently asked him to provide a new
work for performance at a series of concerts
in Dublin that would aid various Irish
charities. "It is characteristic of Handel
that, in the midst of his sorrow and debts,
he could dismiss both, as it were, with a
wave of his pen and write his magnum opus
for a charity far away," wrote Robbins
Landon. At any rate, Handel's newly regained
enthusiasm stirred by William's request
continued to percolate, and he began Samson
immediately upon finishing Messiah,
completing that score, except for two
numbers, within six weeks.
Handel was undoubtedly glad to leave London
and its bitter disappointments in November
1741 for the journey to Dublin to produce
his new oratorio. He traveled by way of the
ancient cathedral town of Chester, where he
met the fifteen-year-old Charles Burney,
later to become the most important
English-language chronicler of 18th-century
music, and read (badly) through a few of
Messiah's unfamiliar choruses with some
local singers. He arrived in Dublin on
November 18th, being "universally known by
his excellent Compositions in all Kinds of
Musick," trumpeted the city's press. It was
the beginning of one of the happiest periods
of Handel's life, when, as he wrote to
Jennens, he passed his time during the
ensuing nine months "with Honour, profit and
pleasure." He gave six concerts of his works
in the new Neale's Music Hall on Fishamble
Street between December 23rd and February
10th, a series with which he was especially
gratified since it was arranged for him
(rather than, as was typical in the 18th
century, by him) by the local gentry and
charitable organizations who had invited him
to Ireland. The success of those programs
was so great that a second series was given
in the spring. In addition to some
instrumental and sacred vocal works, he
presented L'Allegro, Alexander's Feast, the
Ode to St. Cecilia's Day, Esther and a
revised version of the failed opera Imeneo,
which succeeded as a "new serenata" with the
title Hymen. The acclaim he received at
those Irish concerts must have been sweet,
indeed, after the difficulties he had
endured in London. "The music sounds
delightfully in the charming room, which
puts one in such spirits, and my health
being so good, that I exert myself on the
organ with more than usual success," he
recorded of his efforts and rewards at the
keyboard.
Preparations for the presentation of
Handel's grand new oratorio went on
throughout the winter of 1742. Choristers
were assembled from Dublin's churches, the
best available soloists and instrumentalists
were engaged, and the date of the premiere
was set for April 13th. The public rehearsal
on April 9th roused excitement to such a
pitch that the following announcement had to
be placed in Faulkner's "Dublin Journal"
concerning the official first performance:
"The Stewards of the Charitable Musical
Society request the Favour of the Ladies not
to come with Hoops [i.e., hoop skirts] this
Day to the Musick-Hall in Fishamble Street.
The Gentlemen are desired to come without
their Swords, as it will greatly encrease
the Charity, by making Room for more
company." Through these sacrifices, the
capacity of the hall was raised from 600 to
700 on April 13th. An almost equal number,
hoping for a ticket, are said to have milled
about outside. Messiah was a triumph. "It
gave universal Satisfaction to all present;
and was allowed by the greatest Judges to be
the finest Composition of Musick that ever
was heard," announced Faulkner's Journal.
Handel repeated Messiah on June 3rd, and
lingered a while longer before leaving
Dublin on August 13th with sincere but
never-fulfilled promises to return.
The Irish triumph of Messiah did not follow
Handel back to London, at least not
immediately. He wanted to present his new
oratorio as soon as he returned, but he knew
that there would be, in the words of Robbins
Landon, "strong opposition to hearing the
words of the New Testament in a theatre
peopled by actors and actresses of loose
morals and dubious sexual habits." He chose
instead to give the Old Testament-based
Samson on February 18, 1743, and it proved
to be the first of his oratorios that won
unqualified acclaim in the British capital.
Messiah was ready for its London premiere on
March 23rd at Covent Garden, though he chose
not to bill the work under its true title
but called it, simply, "A New Sacred
Oratorio," hoping to skirt some of the
indignation of the more puritanical audience
members and of Edmund Gibson, the Bishop of
London. The ploy succeeded only in part.
"Any work about the Omnipotent should never
be performed in a playhouse," fumed one
clergyman. Some of his colleagues tried to
shut down the theater. (It is an interesting
sign of those 18th-century times that the
Church never publicly raised such objections
to oratorios based on the Old Testament -
the Jewish Old Testament, as it was viewed.)
Messiah, still known only as "Handel's New
Oratorio," was given twice more in 1743, and
twice again in 1745, then put aside. Not
until the death of Bishop Gibson and his
succession by the more liberal Thomas
Sherlock in 1748 did Handel again mount
Messiah, at last under its original title,
for a single performance at Covent Garden on
March 3, 1749. It was, finally, the
following year that Handel's surpassing
masterpiece began to receive its due. After
the April 13, 1750 Covent Garden
performance, Handel presented it again, on
May 1st, for the benefit of the London
Foundling Hospital, a charity that had been
established in 1740 by Captain Thomas Coram
for the "Maintenance & Education of
Exposed & Deserted Young Children." The
concert also commemorated the dedication of
the Hospital's Chapel and the organ therein
that Handel had already contributed.
(Handel's other local charitable interest
was the "Society for the Support of Decayed
Musicians & Their Families," later more
sanitarily renamed the Royal Society of
Musicians.) Messiah, buoyed by a wave of
public good will inspired by Handel giving
its proceeds to a worthy cause, was a huge
success. He presented it for the Foundling
Hospital annually thereafter. It was the
last work he directed, only eight days
before he died on April 14, 1759.
Ever since the London audience belatedly
approved Messiah in 1750, it has remained
one of the best-known and most widely
performed of all musical works. It is the
only important piece of Baroque music with
an unbroken performance tradition from the
time of its creation to our own day. It was
heard in America as early as 1770. A
performance of Messiah by over 500 musicians
was the focus of the celebration of the
centennial of Handel's birth at Westminster
Abbey in 1784. (It was then thought that he
was born in 1684 - the monument above his
grave in the Abbey still wrongly bears that
date.) In 1789 Mozart arranged the
orchestral accompaniments for a performance
in Vienna sponsored by that champion of
"ancient" music, Baron von Swieten, Court
Librarian and librettist for Haydn's The
Creation. George Bernard Shaw reported in
one of his turn-of-the-20th-century columns
of music criticism on a performance
involving some 4,000 (!) participants.
(About the tradition of the audience
standing for the "Hallelujah Chorus"
initiated by George II during one of
Handel's Messiah performances, Shaw noted
that "it is the nearest sensation to the
elevation of the Host known to English
Protestants.") Today, there is probably not
a major city in the Western world that does
not hear Messiah at least once a year.
For all of its unparalleled popularity,
Messiah is an aberration among Handel's
oratorios, the least typical of his two
dozen works in the form: it is his only
oratorio, except Israel in Egypt, whose
entire text is drawn from the Bible; it is
his only oratorio without a continuous
dramatic plot; it is his only oratorio based
on the New Testament; it is his only
oratorio presented in a consecrated space
during his lifetime, a reflection of the
sacred rather than dramatic nature of its
content ("I should be sorry if I only
entertained them; I wished to make them
better," he told one aristocratic admirer);
it has more choruses than any of his
oratorios except Israel; the soloists in
Messiah are commentators on rather than
participants or characters in the oratorio's
story. None of this, of course, detracts a
whit from the emotional/artistic/(perhaps)
religious experience of Messiah. (Handel and
Jennens never appended the definite article
to the title.) Its three parts - The Advent
of the Messiah, The Passion of Christ, and
His Resurrection - embody the most sacred
events of the Christian calendar, yet its
sincerity and loftiness of expression
transcend any dogmatic boundaries. In the
words of George P. Upton, the American
musicologist and early-20th-century critic
of the Chicago Tribune, "Other oratorios may
be compared one with another; Messiah stands
alone, a majestic monument to the memory of
the composer, an imperishable record of the
noblest sentiments of human nature and the
highest aspirations of man."
CITATION
"Messiah:
About The Work'" Dr. Richard E. Rodda,
The Kennedy Center. 2011.
http://www.kennedy-center.org/. Dec.
2011
<http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/?fuseaction=composition&composition_id=2757>. |
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