Handel’s Messiah:
Notes for the MDSC performance
by David Schildkret
| Text © 2008 David Schildkret.
If this content is used to prepare a concert program or
other published/presented work
please credit David Schildkret, ASU School of Music, and Music Director,
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Messiah
occupies a unique place both in Western music and in Handel’s output. It contains some of the most familiar music
ever written (think of the “Hallelujah” chorus), yet as a whole it is not
well-known. It has come to be associated
with the Christmas season, though Handel always performed it during Lent. Listeners who love Messiah often know very little other music by Handel. Alone among Handel’s two-dozen or so oratorios,
Messiah tells no narrative story and
does not involve characters. It is,
rather, an abstract drama—a tribute to and a celebration of the concept of
redemption.
Messiah
surely owes part of its unique character to the circumstances that gave
rise to its creation. In the spring of
1741, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland
suggested that Handel should come to Dublin
to give some concerts. We can only
speculate on how seriously he meant the invitation and how much credence Handel
gave it. But the prospect of leaving London—then the great cultural center of Europe—for the
relative backwater of Dublin
could not have seemed terribly appealing to Handel at first. A few months later, the librettist Charles
Jennens wrote to a friend that he had given Handel a text for a new oratorio. Its words were drawn from scripture, and the theme,
as he reported, “excels every other subject. The subject is Messiah.” Again, Handel could not have been terribly
interested in the project. In fact, he
was probably puzzled by it. Only three years
earlier, he and Jennens had been roundly castigated for putting the words of
the Holy Scriptures onto the concert stage in Israel in Egypt. The work
had been a commercial failure, and it was denounced as profane from pulpits all
over London. Would critics, audiences, and clerics be any
less contemptuous of Messiah? There was no reason to suppose that they
would. Dublin could wait, and the text of Messiah could sit in a drawer.
But something—we do not know
what—changed Handel’s mind in late July or early August of 1741. Handel had always had a somewhat stormy
relationship with his London
audience, and the season of 1740 – 41 had not been a financial success. Probably Handel, on a bit of a whim, thought
it was worth trying his fortunes elsewhere, and Dublin provided a worthwhile prospect. So he made the extraordinary announcement
that he would offer no London season in 1741 –
42 and would instead perform his music in Dublin. The gamble proved worthwhile: Dublin
society treated him as a magnificent celebrity, and his every move, musical and
otherwise, became noteworthy. The concerts
were the talk of the town and heavily subscribed. In advertisements for the first performances
of Messiah, women were exhorted not
to wear hoopskirts so as to allow room in the hall for more listeners. Even the dress rehearsal drew a large,
enthusiastic crowd.
But as Handel contemplated the trip
at the outset, he must have wondered about the resources in Dublin. What kind of singers and instrumentalists
would he find in this relatively provincial town? Handel could not be sure, so he sought to
ensure success by keeping to modest forces.
The text that Jennens had given him a few months earlier provided him
just the flexibility he needed. Perhaps
the Dublin
audience, proud to have a famous composer in their midst, would be more
tolerant of hearing scriptural texts outside of a church service. (This proved
not to be entirely true: Jonathan Swift,
the author of Gulliver’s Travels and
dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin,
seriously contemplated forbidding the choir to take part in the performance
because of the blasphemy of singing biblical words outside of a worship service. Probably Handel’s decision to make the
performance a benefit for prisoners and in support of two Dublin hospitals allowed Swift to relent.)
The aspect of Jennens’s Messiah libretto that may have made it
seem odd to Handel at first proved to be just the thing that made it successful
for Dublin: because the soloists did not assume the roles
of characters in a drama, the music could be freely exchanged among them. Was the tenor not quite up to the challenge
the music presented? Then perhaps the
aria could be given to a soprano instead—a substitution that would clearly be
impossible if an aria were associated with a
particular person in a story. Handel
would make liberal use of this flexibility not only in Dublin, but in the remaining 17 years of his
life, when he performed Messiah virtually
annually.
Handel also kept the number of
musicians to a minimum: the work could
easily be performed by four soloists (though he typically used more in his own
performances of Messiah), a small
choir, and a string orchestra with minimal contributions from the trumpets and
drums. The oboes and bassoons were added
later, when the work was performed in London. Even the slightly expanded orchestra he used
later in London is modest to the point of austerity when compared to the
orchestras in Handel’s other works: they
typically include flutes, horns, and such special instruments as harps and
lutes, and they frequently feature solo instruments. While the rest of Handel’s oratorios call for
the choir to be divided into anywhere from five to eight parts, Messiah is almost entirely for four-part
chorus. The one exception is the opening
of “Lift up your heads, O ye gates,” where the sopranos divide, creating a
five-voice texture.
* * *
Messiah is in three parts, as was typical for the Handelian
oratorio. Part One
of the work deals with the prophecy of the coming of the Messiah, the carrying
out of that plan through the Nativity, and the miracles attendant upon the
Messiah’s coming. Part Two deals with
the initial rejection of the Messiah by the world, told through the scourging
of Jesus and the Passion story. By the
end of Part Two, the Messiah’s message is victorious. Part Three deals with the promise of
resurrection and ends with a song of praise to the Paschal Victim.
All of this is couched in exquisite
music that is remarkably varied given the limited palette with which it is
painted. The choruses
in particular range from the delicate chamber music style of “For unto us a
child is born” and “His yoke is easy” (based on Italian duets Handel had
written earlier in the summer of 1741) to the grand anthem style of the
“Hallelujah” and the final chorus.
The arias provide ample scope for the singers, from the dazzling
ebullience of “Rejoice greatly” to the heart-rending sympathy of “He was
despised.” The death and resurrection of
the Messiah are treated simply, in stark solos that are especially affecting.
As Goethe famously said in his
sonnet “On Nature and Art,” “in der
Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der
Meister”—a master reveals himself through limitations. Handel, limiting himself to a bare-bones
ensemble—the most minimal forces he could imagine—worked for 24 days and turned
out a masterwork that has endured for a quarter of a millennium. Uniquely in Western music, Messiah has been performed virtually
continuously since it was composed in 1742.
And though we may think of the work as a Christmas celebration,
that was not Handel’s intention. This
music—majestic, poignant, jubilant, and delicate by turns—will certainly grace
a summer’s evening in Maine,
and there can be no more suitable setting for Messiah than the comfortable elegance of St. Saviour’s church. We think Handel would approve.
(This essay
will appear in the concert program for the MDSC performances August 4 and 5,
2007)
