Messiah: A Musical Celebration
H+H and Messiah
About 1,000 people experienced the first Handel and Haydn Society performance in King’s Chapel on Christmas Day 1815. The program included excerpts from Handel’s Messiah: two arias, “I know that My Redeemer liveth” and “He shall feed His flock,” and two choruses, “Lift up your heads O ye gates,” and the “Hallelujah” chorus, which concluded the concert. The performance was a resounding success; one Boston newspaper hoped that it would be “immediately announced for repetition,” so the 113 musicians—100 singers (90 men and 10 women), and 13 instrumentalists—repeated the program the following January.
Three years to the day after its inaugural concert, on Christmas Day 1818, H+H gave the first complete performance of Messiah in America and has been performing this work every November or December since 1854. The oratorio concluded two-thirds of H+H’s 19th-century music festivals and has been a fixture in H+H anniversary celebrations. Moreover, H+H frequently sang the “Hallelujah” chorus for benefit concerts and civic events.
The Origins and First Performances of Messiah
Charles Jennens, who had provided texts for other Handel oratorios, sent the composer a new text in 1741. Rather than telling a continuous story, Jennens’s latest text was a collection of scripture passages from the Old and New Testaments which referred to the prophesy and birth of Christ (Part the First), his death and resurrection (Part the Second), and the response of the believer (Part the Third). About this same time, William Cavendish, the Duke of Devonshire and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, invited Handel to Dublin to participate in a season of oratorio concerts to benefit local charities. Handel accepted the invitation and began composing; he set Messiah in just 24 days. The oratorio was first performed in Dublin at the Music Hall on Fishamble Street on April 13, 1742.
The following year, Handel premiered the oratorio in London, changing the title to A Sacred Oratorio because of objections to the use of Biblical texts in a concert setting. Although these performances were not as successful as those in Ireland, beginning with a 1750 concert to benefit the Foundling Hospital, Messiah performances became an annual event. Objections to Handel’s sacred oratorio had subsided and were replaced with descriptions like that written by Catherine Talbot in 1756: “The only public place I have been to this winter was to hear the Messiah, nor can there be a nobler entertainment.”
Even during Handel’s lifetime, Messiah performances became a popular event and the oratorio’s impact has not diminished since the composer’s death; it is one of the few works that have been programmed regularly by amateur and professional ensembles alike.
Performing Messiah
Handel composed other oratorios, both before and after Messiah, but none continually captivated concertgoers in quite the same way. Since the performances for the Foundling Hospital, Messiah is one of the few compositions in the history of music that never waned in popular and critical appeal. It has been performed by large and small ensembles, as well as arranged by other composers, such as Mozart in the eighteenth century and Robert Franz, at the request of H+H, in the nineteenth century.
For the 1742 premiere of Messiah in Dublin, it is estimated that Handel had a combined ensemble of approximately 50 performers, with almost the same number of vocalists and instrumentalists. For the London performances, Handel had more singers available to him and after the composer’s death, Messiah performances were given with an ever-increasing number of musicians. In 1784, the organizers of a five-day Handel festival assembled over 250 singers and a matching number of instrumentalists. The trend of larger ensembles reached new heights in the 19th century, including the first H+H Music Festival in 1857 that closed with a performance of Messiah featuring a chorus of six hundred and an orchestra of eighty. In the 20th century, however, this trend began to reverse due to a renewed interest in reconstructing performances using Handel’s original performing forces. For H+H, that trend began in earnest in 1967 under conductor Thomas Dunn, who, after presenting one last large-scale Messiah, began reducing the size of the chorus. The commitment to historical performance practice was solidified in 1986 with the appointment of Christopher Hogwood as H+H’s artistic director. Today’s performance with 14 vocalists and 10 instrumentalists reflects the historical awareness of the approximate size of the ensemble used in Handel’s day, combined with performance techniques and period instruments of 18th-century specifications. This historical performance perspective is blended with the passion and fervor that has characterized this oratorio from its inception.
The Music
Much of the appeal of Messiah lies in Handel’s bold and subtle use of text painting, which builds relationships between different parts of the oratorio. In the aria, “Every valley shall be exalted,” Handel writes explicitly “crooked” and “straight” melodic lines for both the voice and instruments as musical elaborations of these words. Later, in an aria from Part the Second, “Thou shalt break them,” what was crooked is now an accented, descending, and jagged line in the strings, which is echoed in the voice, underscoring the image of shattering something “to pieces like a potter’s vessel.” By intensifying the musical imagery heard earlier in the oratorio, Handel connects individual parts to construct a unified whole.
The choruses are an integral part of Handel’s ingenious musical imagery. The carefree-sounding opening line of “His yoke is easy” from Part the First, belies the complexity of this chorus. A yoke, of course, is neither easy nor light. By setting the text in a way that sounds effortless but is, in fact, difficult, Handel is emphasizing not only the words “easy” and “yoke,” but also reflecting the deeper meaning of the “burden” of following a moral life, an idea that would have resonated with his audience.
Equally powerful is the chorus “All we like sheep have gone astray” from Part the Second. The music that opens this chorus is light, airy, and acts out the text by wandering on the word “astray.” In the context of choruses and aria that precede it, this text and its setting might seem out of place. However, when the text of this chorus continues “and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all,” Handel reprises the emotional intensity heard earlier.
This dramatic arc is completed with the “Hallelujah” chorus. Here, Handel constructs a chorus that is a study in musical cohesion. In counterbalance to the “crooked” lines of “Ev’ry valley” and angular figures in “Thou shalt break them,” in the “Hallelujah” chorus, the lines are focused and combined in multiple manifestations of musical unity.
Handel returns to this idea in the final chorus, “Worthy is the Lamb,” which begins with the chorus singing as a single entity. Even when Handel separates the voice parts with imitation, each vocal entrance is given immediacy, and imbued with the symbolism of many becoming one. These are just some of the ways Handel’s Messiah can be understood as more than the sum of its parts: Each moment is captivating on its own, but the whole is a richly woven musical tapestry.
Notes by Teresa M Neff
Original English text taken from the Scriptures by Charles Jennens