| Handel: Messiah |
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Des Moines Choral Society HANDEL: MESSIAH GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL: Born in Halle, February 23, 1685; died in London, April 14, 1759 "Handel's Messiah is more than a piece of music; it is a monument of Western civilization which has, across the two and a half centuries since it was written, acquired the status of a myth." These words of the British critic and historian Nicholas Kenyon suitably summarize Western man's view of Messiah, for few works in the entire history of music have engendered such universal appeal through inspirational beauty. If "the characterizing trait of all authentic masterpieces is their capacity for infinite self-renewal," as critic Lawrence Gilman once observed, then Messiah rests securely fixed as a gleaming star in the firmament of masterpieces. Surely it represents the single best-known and most often performed example of oratorio. Messiah's continuing overwhelming popularity, which extends back to Handel's own time, would have surprised its creator. He regarded himself first and foremost as a dramatic composer, which meant a writer of operas, and it is chiefly for opera that he would expect to be remembered today. For over two decades, Handel was lionized as the greatest of English composers (despite his German birth and Italian training), and Londoners flocked to see his forty-plus operas produced between 1711 (the year of his arrival in London) and the late 1730s. But the fickle public grew tired of opera, and by the mid-thirties it was finished as a popular draw. Something new was needed to attract the public, something perhaps uniquely English. Handel rose to the occasion by creating the English oratorio, beginning with Esther in 1732 and continuing over the next quarter century with twenty-two more. These works used English (not Italian) texts, and drew their subject matter mostly from Old Testament stories, with which the English particularly identified. The oratorio as Handel fashioned it was essentially an unstaged drama employing all the same musico-dramatic ingredients of opera: recitative, arioso, aria, solo ensemble, chorus and dramatic characterizations, but without the trappings of sets, costumes and physical movement. Additionally, the role of the chorus was raised to far greater importance in oratorio. Among his oratorios, Handel would probably have staked his claim to fame on one of the more dramatic ones - Saul, perhaps, or Solomon or Judas Maccabaeus - but hardly Messiah, which lacks any external action, has no character portrayal, and is entirely contemplative rather than dramatic in tone. But history has decreed otherwise, and the knee-jerk association of Handel with Messiah is as commonplace now as Ravel with Bolero or Beethoven with The Ninth. The idea for Messiah came from Charles Jennens, a musical amateur and something of a literary figure, with whom Handel had worked on other choral works (Saul, Israel in Egypt and L'Allegro, il Pensieroso ed il Moderato. Handel had accepted an invitation to give some oratorio performances in Dublin during Holy Week of 1742, and Jennens felt the subject matter of Messiah would be appropriate. Drawing nearly all his texts from Old Testament sources (principally the Authorized English Bible of 1611), Jennens fashioned a meditative framework in which the whole of Christ's life and work is laid out: the prophecies of His coming, His birth and the subsequent rejoicing, His life, the Passion, Resurrection and hope for His Second Coming. Hence, Messiah is far from being appropriate for the Christmas season alone; it celebrates the whole of the Christian faith. Interestingly enough, this is accomplished entirely through anonymous vocalists and chorus. There are no specific characterizations, not even of Christ. Nor are any of His words quoted. In his book of 1957, Jens Peter Larsen points out that "Messiah is not, as is often popularly supposed, a number of scenes from the Life of Jesus linked together to form a certain dramatic whole, but a representation of one fulfillment of Redemption through the Redeemer, Messiah." Robert Myers notes that "logically, Handel's masterpiece should be called Redemption, for its author celebrates the idea of redemption rather than the personality of Christ." And R. A. Streatfeild observed in 1909 that Messiah was "the first instance in the history of music of an attempt to view the mighty drama of human redemption from an artistic standpoint." The first performance of Messiah took place on April 13, 1742 at Neale's Music Hall in Dublin. It was a stunning success, but subsequent performances in London during the next few years met with cool reception. Then, in 1750, it caught on, and from that year its popularity never slackened. Handel died nine years later, eight days after his last public appearance at a Messiah performance. But Messiah continued to live, to grow, in fact, to assume monstrous proportions. The concept of Messiah as musical myth, as something larger than life, took hold at the first great Handel Commemoration in 1784, where the chorus numbered 275, the largest choral force ever assembled for a single performance to date (most performances in Handel's lifetime employed a chorus of about twenty), and an orchestra of 250 assisted. The inflation continued throughout the nineteenth century. In 1843, the Musical Examiner asked, "Who ever heard of a choir too large for Handel?" Apparently few had, for in 1857, Boston's Handel and Haydn Society gave a performance with somewhere between 600 and 700 voices. Two years later, at the Great Handel Commemoration Festival to commemorate the centenary of the composer's death, we find a chorus of 2,765 and an orchestra of 460. For Boston's Grand National Celebration of Peace in 1869, the "Hallelujah" Chorus was performed by a staggering force of 10,000 voices and 500 instrumentalists. Now the pendulum has swung again in the opposite direction. Over the past three decades or so, modern scholarship has emphasized the relative paucity of performing forces in Handel's day, and there have been numerous recordings and live performances that adhere to one or another versions of a score that Handel used. However, it is appropriate to remind ourselves at this point that there is no such thing as an "authentic" Messiah. Nor can we speak of a "definitive" version or a "complete" version. Right from the date of completion of the score in September, 1741, until Handel's death eighteen years later, the composer constantly revised, altered and modified Messiah in accordance with the exigencies of individual performances. These changes took the form of transposing numbers to suit the range of the vocal soloists, omitting numbers entirely if they proved too difficult, abridging them if time were a factor, rearranging them for reasons of pacing, inserting additional material, inflating the choir, incorporating extra orchestral instruments, and so forth, much as a Broadway show today is subjected to the same process. To follow the myriad alterations and modifications to Messiah during Handel's lifetime, not to mention what came after, has provided scholars with an immensely fertile field to plow, and some of the research is fascinating. One of the more interesting conclusions is that Messiah can never again be performed exactly as Handel conducted it at the world premiere in Dublin, for one of the substituted recitatives in that performance has been lost. In fact, Handel himself never again conducted the work in exactly that same form. So many options exist today that a recording conducted by Nicholas McGegan has been produced in which nine different versions are accommodated. By programming one's CD player, the listener can reconstruct around a "core" the version of choice using alternate numbers and adding or subtracting them at will. Like other Handel oratorios, Messiah is divided into three parts. Part I tells of the coming of Christ as related in Old Testament prophecies. His birth is announced, again in Old Testament scripture ("For unto us a Child is born"), and an angel tells shepherds in the fields the good tidings. Peace on earth and the redemption of man are at hand. Part II speaks of the Passion, Resurrection (again, almost entirely through Old Testament prophecy) and the spread of the gospel. The great vision of Christ's triumph and glory is revealed in the concluding "Hallelujah" Chorus to words from the book of Revelation. The theme of Part III is announced by the soprano's words, "My Redeemer liveth ... and shall stand at the latter day upon the earth" - an expression of faith in redemption and rebirth symbolized in the view of Christ's Second Coming. Messiah's final vision, in a setting of unsurpassed musical grandeur, is that of Christ, the Lamb of God, sitting on the throne in all eternity. In conclusion, the words of former Cleveland Orchestra annotator Klaus G. Roy provide a fitting commentary on Messiah's near-mythic role in our lives: "Handel's Messiah seems to be, like nature itself, unchangeable yet ever-changing. It has been produced in versions almost too numerous to count, in abridgements, in expansions, in contemporary dress both stylish and styleless, in auditoriums acoustically perfect or ludicrously inappropriate, in little churches and in vast cathedrals. It has put up with presentations that observed the letter and lost the spirit and with many more that somehow found the spirit without observing more than a minimum of the letter. To some it has represented religion personified; to others, religious art, and to yet others, art. For some it has been made hateful by distortion, by overuse, by sheer boredom. For others it has been the one art work the regular 'consumption' of which was their primary contact with great music. And for still others who had avoided hearing it until - in their view - conditions were likely to be right, it has proved revelatory. All these things, and more, Messiah has been and continues to be. It takes a work of extraordinary substance to exert such perennial power over mankind." |