Page 119 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

elaborate sets and costumes. He could draw on the longstanding English love of choral music, a tradition that extended well back into the Middle Ages. And he could exploit a new, untapped market—the faithful of the Puritan, Methodist, and growing evangelical sects in England, who had viewed the pleasures of foreign opera with distrust and even contempt. And in contrast to the Italian opera, the oratorio was sung in English, contributing further to the genre’s appeal to a large segment of English society.
Messiah (1741)
Beginning in 1732 and continuing over a twenty-year period, Handel wrote a total of nearly twenty oratorios. The most famous of these is his Messiah, com- posed in the astonishingly short period of three and a half weeks during the summer of 1741. It was first performed in Dublin, Ireland, the following April as part of a charity benefit, with Handel conducting. Having heard the dress re- hearsal, the local press waxed enthusiastic about the new oratorio, saying that it “far surpasses anything of that Nature, which has been performed in this or any other Kingdom.” Messiah was a hot ticket, so hot in fact that ladies were urged not to wear hoop skirts and gentlemen were admonished to leave their swords at home. In this way, Handel squeezed seven hundred paying customers into a hall with benches usually seating only six hundred.
Buoyed by his artistic and Baroque financial success in Dublin, Handel took Messiah back to London,
made minor alterations, and per-
formed it in Covent Garden The-
ater. In 1750, he offered Messiah again, this time in the chapel of the Foundling Hospital (Figure 6.10), an orphanage in London, and again there was much popular ac- claim for Handel, as well as profit for charity. Thereafter, and down to the present day, Handel’s ora- torio Messiah is equally at home in church, concert hall, and public theater.
In a general way, Messiah tells
the story of the life of Christ. It is
divided into three parts (instead
of three acts): (I) the prophecy of
His coming and His Incarnation,
(II) His Passion and Resurrection,
and (III) reflections on the Chris-
tian victory over death. Most of Handel’s oratorios recount the heroic deeds of characters from the Old Testament; Messiah is exceptional because the subject comes from the New Testament. There is neither plot action nor “characters” in the dramatic sense, nor are there costumes or staging. The drama is experienced in the mind of the listener.
Figure 6.10
The chapel of the Foundling Hospital, London, where Messiah was performed annually for the benefit of the orphans. Handel himself designed and paid for the organ seen on the second story at the back of the hall.
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