| ANALYSIS |
MESSIAH
Handel’s Atypical Masterpiece
From Opera
to Oratorio
Early in his career,
the well-traveled, cosmopolitan Handel tried
his hand at various forms of sacred music,
including both the German Passion and
the Italian oratorio. But it was
to the opera stage that he directed much of
his creative energy during his prime - above
all to the genre of tragic opera set to
Italian librettos (opera seria), with its
story lines drawn from mythological or
historical figures and its call for dazzling
vocal display. Messiah actually
belongs to a later period of transition,
when Handel needed to reinvent himself.
Despite his earlier successes writing opera
for the London stage, by the
late 1730s taste and fashion in his adopted
country had shifted significantly. Poor box
office sales, increasingly nasty
competition, and the elaborate sets and
pricey singers that were all part of the
enterprise eventually made opera an
unsustainable business model.
Handel had meanwhile been
experimenting with a new brand of oratorio
set to English texts - an approach that was
rooted to some extent in another
significant source of his success in
England: his choral music and anthems for
British patrons. He developed the English
oratorio into a thrilling
substitute for opera. Although Handel still
had a few more operatic projects up his
sleeve, by the time he composed Messiah in
1741, he had ceased writing
Italian operas altogether and was channeling
his muse into oratorios; these he continued
to produce over the next decade until
blindness overtook the composer.
A handy definition of Handel’s
English variation on the pre-existing
oratorio format appears in the preface to
Samson (on which he embarked
just two weeks after completing
Messiah and which is often considered its
“twin”). An oratorio, writes Samson’s
librettist Newburgh Hamilton,
who used Milton’s poetic drama Samson
Agonistes as his source, is “a musical
drama, whose subject must be Scriptural, and
in which the Solemnity of
Church-Musick is agreeably united with the
most pleasing Airs of the Stage” - a genre,
in other words, that has it both ways. A
sense of moral uplift is juiced
along by the entertainment value of opera
(but without the expense, costumes, and
fussy, overpaid egos). Oratorio had an
additional appeal in that it was
more acceptable for emerging middle-class
audiences wary of the scandal-tinged world
of opera.
A Controversial Classic
Messiah’s success over
the ensuing centuries caused it to eclipse
Handel’s other works of music drama - operas
and oratorios alike - and even gave it a
reputation as the quintessential
English oratorio. Yet Handel and his
librettist, Charles Jennens, took a risk by
shaping Messiah as they did: in many ways it
swerves away from the norm. Indeed, the
oratorio initially touched off a controversy
that raged for several years back in London,
despite the acclaim Messiah
received when it was first introduced to
Dublin audiences at the conclusion of the
1741-42 season. (Handel had been invited to
spend that year in Ireland.) The
composer seems to have anticipated the
resistance it would face when he brought
Messiah to London in 1743, and so he
billed the work simply as a “New
Sacred Oratorio.”
Messiah’s method of
setting actual scriptural texts and its
evocation of Jesus within a secular genre
that could be performed “for diversion and
amusement” even triggered
charges of blasphemy - although these were
leveled against the secular context of the
performances rather than Handel’s music
itself. Thereafter, the only
times Handel led Messiah in a non-secular
space were in his last years, when he gave
midday performances in the newly built
chapel of the Foundling
Hospital. (The fact that the composer
donated proceeds from Messiah concerts to
charitable causes added to the work’s
allure.) In any case, this was a
short-lived cultural skirmish, and annual
performances of Messiah during the
composer’s final decade became a highlight
of the season. These always took
place in the spring, at Eastertide. It was
only after Handel’s death that the
association of Messiah with the
Christmas season became firmly
embedded.
Messiah’s Structure and Music
Charles Jennens - a wealthy patron
who was nevertheless alienated from
contemporary English politics - juxtaposes
extracts from both the Old and
New Testaments to represent the
basic narrative of Christian redemption.
Rather than a biographical sketch of the
life of Jesus, Messiah concerns
the very idea of divinity
becoming manifest in human history (hence
the lack of the definite article -“Messiah,”
not “the Messiah” -
in the title).
There is very little dramatic
impersonation of characters: the narrative
is indirect and suggestive - and, as has
been often noted, downright confusing
to anyone not familiar with the
implied events involving the life of Jesus.
Jennens divides the libretto into three acts
(although he calls them
“parts”), much like the
organization of a baroque opera. Part One
centers around prophecy and the nativity of
Jesus, ending with his miracles. This is the
part of the oratorio that is
most closely tied to the Christmas season.
Following its evocation of hope comes a
concise retelling of the Passion story of
sacrifice in Part Two. Part
Three concludes with the implications of
Christ’s redemption of humanity from the
fall of Adam.
Handel was above all a man of the
theater, and his operatic genius for
establishing the mood to suit a given
situation is everywhere apparent. Overall,
his musical choices zoom in on
the universal emotions that underlie each
stage of the Christian redemption narrative.
Whereas he typically accomplishes this
in the operatic arena through a
chain of richly expressive arias, Messiah
makes use of greater structural diversity.
Part One establishes a basic
pattern of recitative, aria, and chorus,
which then allows for further variation in
the other two parts. Handel moreover freely
avails himself of the full
spectrum of international styles, with which
his experience had made him well acquainted.
Messiah draws on an encyclopedic variety of
choral textures, interspersing
these with a profusion of individually
characterized arias. Highly elaborate
counterpoint is juxtaposed with homophonic
choruses as solid as granite,
while majestic French postures and soulful
Italianate lyricism further enliven the
score. And what an astonishing range of
colors Handel’s palette
contains. Though the actual instrumentation
is remarkably economical, Handel uses it
with a characteristic genius for reinforcing
the pacing of the drama. For
example, in Part One he withholds the
trumpets until “Glory to God” but then keeps
them in the wings again until the
“Hallelujah!” chorus at the end
of Part Two (which refers not to the moment
of Christ’s resurrection, as is sometimes
mistakenly thought, but to the triumph
of redemption).
Handel moreover reveals his mastery
of a range of psychological expression that
transcends stereotypical baroque “affects”
or moods. In Part One alone, he
paints the fathomless darkness of the sense
of universal waiting for a savior but also
includes the tranquil oasis of the
instrumental “Pastoral Symphony”
(Pifa refers to the music of shepherds) as
well as the dancingly exuberant gestures of
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion.” Over
and over, Handel finds freshly
inventive ways to add to the venerable
tradition of “painting” words (and their
subtexts) through music. One of the
pleasures of hearing Messiah
repeatedly is to discover subtler surprises
within the familiar patterns. We immediately
sense the “straying” lines of “All
we like sheep” - but the same
chorus also shifts from a cheerful demeanor
into the minor mode to deepen the sense of
pathos when the consequences of
human failure are depicted.
Amid all this variety, by the end of
Part Three Handel has taken us on a journey
that will later become familiar - and
re-secularized - in the
symphonies of Beethoven and his
followers: the passage from darkness to
enlightenment and final victory. Of course
the “Hallelujah!” chorus introduces one of
the most remarkable musical
challenges a composer could face, which is
to avoid a sense of anti-climax in what
follows. Yet that’s exactly what Handel
accomplishes, pressing his
inspiration further in the simple, direct
affirmation of “I know that my Redeemer
liveth” and the soaring certainty of “The
trumpet shall sound.” And in the
choral finale, as the voices weave their
threads together in Handel’s fugal setting
of “Amen,” this final word acquires
an all-encompassing resonance -
a serenely chanted, transporting “Om.”
So What Exactly Is an Oratorio?
The word “oratorio” comes from the
Italian for a hall of prayer, but by
Handel’s time works of this genre were being
performed in secular venues as a
substitute for the far more expensive - and
sometimes ideologically forbidden - project
of staged opera. (This differs from J.S.
Bach’s Passions, which were
intended for liturgical performance.) The
oratorio originated in Italy around the same
time as opera and similarly represents a
kind of musical drama, though
one performed without costumes and scenery.
But it tends to recount stories that are
religious in nature (whether drawn from the
Bible or from literary sources
that use the Bible). And in an oratorio the
chorus, which usually played a minor part at
best in the earlier, aria-centered forms
of opera, takes on a far more
prominent role. Handel had begun
experimenting with an English-language
format of the oratorio for his aristocratic
patrons as early as 1718, but
with his shift away from Italian opera in
the late 1730s, his new approach to oratorio
took wing and became a creative focus
throughout the 1740s.
Versions of Messiah
There is, simply put, no clear “gold
standard” or ultimate version of the score
for Messiah. Handel himself introduced
changes during the revivals he
led in his final years, taking into account
the strengths or limitations of particular
soloists and players he had available. The
complex history of performance
traditions in the nearly 270 years since the
first Messiah tended at first toward
increasing expansion of choral and
orchestral forces, followed by a
pendulum swing in recent decades back to
dimensions that reflect practices in
Handel’s own time. Typically - even in
such “reworkings” as Mozart’s
version of Messiah - several cuts from Parts
Two and Three are made, as is the case in
this performance, which segues from
the chorus in No. 33 to No. 40
(Part Two) and from No. 48 to No. 53 (Part
Three).
Grant Gershon studied an early
edition of the score published in 1777 (a
gift of composer Morten Lauridsen) as he was
preparing for this performance.
In general, he remarks, the most
important decision comes down to which
soloists sing which arias: “You tailor that
to the singers you have at hand, just
as in Handel’s own time. Above
all, I wanted to balance the solo duties as
equally as possible, so that all the
soloists have something meaningful to do
in both halves of the concert.”
CITATION
"Messiah:
Handel's Atypical Masterpiece'" Thomas
May, Los Angeles Master Chorale. 2012.
http://www.lamc.org/. December 22,
2012.
<http://www.lamc.org/performances/program-notes/2012-12-22-handel-messiah>. |
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