The Experience of Handle’s Messiah
To many, Handel’s Messiah is unequivocally a religious experience. The oratorio has been performed with consistent applause ever since its premiere in Dublin on April 13, 1742. The orchestral composition has accompanied the firesides of many during the holiday seasons and the triumphant voices of the “Hallelujah” chorus have resonated in churches across the world. After reading an article from Tuesday December 24, 1991 located in The Times Digital Achieves, I was left to question what the experience of Messiah entails. The article itself serves a reflection of a performance by the Huddersfield Choral Society, one of the leading choral societies in the United Kingdom that was founded in 1836, and it positions itself as a brief overview of the piece and makes claims in regard to its legacy.
In The Times article titled “Hallelujah!” the author writes that the Hallelujah chorus from Messiah is “a sound as redolent of British culture as Big Ben’s chimes” and that the “work’s resilience” is a reason why its amens continue to echo in Britain. Additionally, the author ends the article by stating that “In the past 250 years few finer Christmas sermons have been penned.”
Why does Messiah hold a place as a Religious experience? And why has Messiah maintained a legacy as part of the British culture and as a Christmas sermon? Well, the answer might seem pretty unambiguous. The lyrics of Messiah were extracted from the Bible from books such as Isiah and Luke, and they voice the story of the birth of Jesus and the prophecies he is a part of. Britain, a country whose populace predominantly aligns with the Christian faith, would be a place that would accept the composition openheartedly because of its religious qualities. Even at the premiere, the concert served as a benefit concert whose proceeds would go to aid with the relief of prisoners, support the Mercer’s Hospital, and the Charitable Infirmaries according to an excerpt from the Dublin Journal.
All of this seems to portray that the Messiah is a Christian experience, but if the composition were devoid of its lyrics, matters become opaque. While the author positions Handel’s oratorio as a Christmas sermon that is a custom in British culture, the Messiah could be celebrated at Easter time (while the beginning of the work recounts the birth of Jesus, the latter two thirds references the death and resurrection of Jesus) because of the relevance it holds with various cultures around the world. Due to its establishment as a religious experience, it can hold value with Irish, American, German, Italian, etc. cultures as well.
Musically, many of the musical elements of Messiah are derived from Opera. The musical qualities found in the Messiah such as its ritornellos, recitatives, arias, melismas, madrigalisms, fugue like characteristics, and its homophonic, monophonic, and polyphonic textures are all operatic elements. One such ritornello can be heard at the beginning of “Ev’ry Valley Shall Be Exalted” with the instrumental introduction of the melody and a melisma can be heard in the same piece when the vocalist sings the word “exalted.” Additionally, the the song “For Unto Us a Child is Born” demonstrates fugue like characteristics when the main melody is exchanged between the various voices in the piece. “Comfort Ye my People” is also a recitative because its lyrics should be interpreted as speaking and not as singing. All of this is to convey that Handel composed the Messiah on the foundation of operatic elements.
The premiere of Messiah did not take place in a church or a place of worship but rather in a music hall on Fishamble Street. Jonathan Swift, the famous satirist who was also the Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, originally did not want to be associated with the premiere (he would change his stance) stating that he would “punish such vicars” for “their respective disobedience, rebellion, perfidy, and ingratitude.” Handel himself even borrowed the composition for the piece “For Unto Us a Child is Born” from a piece he had written about how one should not trust love and that love is deceiving which he had written years earlier. This shows that the Handel did not compose “For Unto Us a Child is Born” solely for the purposes of the Messiah but rather implemented it from a piece he had composed before.
While it may seem that I am trying to articulate details in regard to why the Messiah should not be viewed as holy and that Handel just plastered Bible verses onto music, that is not the case. I am more so interested legacy of the Messiah and why the work has this “resilience” that the author of The Times article author mentioned. Does it have a holy resilience or is it a compositional resilience on the part of Handel? Music is of course suggestive and this question may have no clean answer, but if you are one of those individuals who views the Messiah in high regard and listened to it during the holiday season with your family around the fireplace, those are your experiences, and your individual experiences are a reason why I agree that the Messiah has this resilience and why it is still performed over 250 years later. I certainly love the Messiah, but by looking at all aspects of the composition and premiere, I hope that the musical experience of the Messiah is not overshadowed and that its redolence can be heard while keeping all its musical components in mind.
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