| ANALYSIS |
Handel's
Messiah
Primo le parole, poi la musica:
first the words, then the music. Ask a
roomful of people to identify the composer
of Messiah, and a roomful of hands will go
up. Ask that same gathering to name the
librettist, and puzzled silence is likely to
follow. To be sure, Messiah is not a setting
of a freshly-written, original book; the
text is a compilation of passages from the
Old and New Testaments. But that makes it no
less impressive an achievement. The work of
a perceptive and passionate writer,
Messiah’s libretto is just as noteworthy in
its own way as Handel’s immortal music. So
before that music, a look at those fine
words—and their curator—is very much in
order.
Charles Jennens’s palatial home at Gopsall,
North West Leicestershire—near Bosworth
Field where the War of the Roses was
conclusively ended—was demolished in 1951
after years of neglect and abuse. Much the
same can be said about Jennens himself:
glamorous in his day, his star faded rapidly
and his posthumous reputation was gutted by
commentarial wrecking balls. “Suleyman the
Magnificent”, japed 18th-century Shakespeare
scholar George Steevens. “A vain fool crazed
by his wealth” sniped Samuel Johnson.
Prickly, prissy, snippy, snooty, and
waspish, Jennens was manifestly not a man of
the people. But charges that he was an
intellectual featherweight are unfounded.
The sharpest barbs are products of
Steevens’s malicious envy of Jennens’s
classy Shakespeare editions, and as such
deserve permanent retirement. Christopher
Hogwood duly notes Jennens’s
“self-importance and intolerance, the
high-handed manner of a wealthy country
gentleman, opinionated and cruel in his
criticism, whose ostentation made many of
his contemporaries enemies.” But he also
points out Jennens’s many accomplishments,
his educated taste, his passionate
dedication to Handel’s music, his
well-designed libretti, and his often
splendid editorial advice—such as restoring
an excised “Allelujah” to the Part I finale
of Saul.
Messiah is a child of the Enlightenment,
that revolutionary mindset that promoted
reason over unexamined belief, but Charles
Jennens was no Edward Gibbon, Thomas Paine,
or Thomas Jefferson proclaiming a humanistic
philosophy based on rational inquiry. Quite
the contrary: Jennens disdained, dismissed,
and distrusted the freethinking theology of
his age. He sought instead to defend his
deeply-felt and conservative Anglican
Christianity against what he saw as
intellectual attacks on the core of the
Christian message. The very title of his
libretto—Messiah—throws down a gauntlet to
those who would deny the divinity of Jesus
of Nazareth, or who would question the
inerrancy of the Judaeo-Christian
scriptures. Even more to the point, Jennens
blended passages from both Old and New
Testaments in support of his stance that the
Messiah promised by the Hebrew prophets was
indeed Jesus of Nazareth. In July 1741
Jennens wrote to his friend Edward
Holdsworth:
Handel says he will do nothing next Winter,
but I hope I shall perswade him to set
another Scripture Collection I have made for
him, & perform it for his own Benefit in
Passion Week. I hope he will lay out his
whole Genius & Skill upon it, that the
Composition may excell all his former
Compositions, as the Subject excells every
other Subject. The Subject is Messiah.
Jennens did indeed manage to “perswade” his
eminent friend and colleague, but victory
was tempered with disappointment, as we hear
in another letter to Holdsworth, from
December 1741:
I heard with great pleasure at my arrival in
Town, that Handel had set the Oratorio of
Messiah; but it was some mortification to me
to hear that instead of performing it here
he was gone to Ireland with it. However, I
hope we shall hear it when he comes back.
These letters reveal that Messiah represents
a departure from Handel’s customary active
and collaborative relationship with his
librettists, including Jennens in previous
projects such as Saul, L’Allegro, and
(probably) Israel in Egypt. Handel
apparently set the completed Messiah
libretto as handed to him, without the usual
rounds of editorial negotiations. That
speaks well of Jennens’s literary skill, for
his elegantly structured libretto deserves a
full share of the credit for Messiah’s
perennial popularity. Jennens based his
scriptural selections on both theological
and musical considerations; Messiah is first
and foremost an oratorio libretto, not a
religious tract. Consider the very first
section, drawn from the first five verses of
Isaiah 40, which Jennens structured as
recitative-aria-chorus, a formula that will
repeat itself—sometimes with significant
expansion—throughout the entire oratorio.
Wheels within wheels: sections combine to
make up a complete part; three parts
(corresponding to acts in an opera) make up
the whole. Part I (numbers 1–18 in the
Barenreiter score) concerns itself with the
prophecy of the coming Messiah, drawing the
text of its five sections largely from the
Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Malachai, and
Zechariah. Sections 1–3 tell of the one who
shall purify the sons of Levi (Malachi 3:3)
and that unto the people who walked in
darkness (Isaiah 9:2) a child is born
(Isaiah 9:6). Section 4 flashes forward to
the New Testament Gospel of Luke 2:8–14,
recounting the story of the shepherds in the
fields who are visited by an angel
proclaiming the birth of the Messiah. The
final section symbolizes Jesus of Nazareth’s
ministry, ending with a restrained chorus
taken from Matthew 11:30: “His Yoke is Easy,
His Burthen is Light”.
Part II (numbers 19–39) concerns itself with
Jesus’s suffering and death, introduced by
John 1:29 and Isaiah 53:3—”Behold the Lamb
of God…He was despisèd and rejected of Men”,
set unforgettably by Handel in a sorrowfully
dignified chorus followed by an extended
aria that ranks amongst his most heartfelt
creations. The long first section touches on
Psalm 22 (“All they that see him laugh him
to scorn”) and ends with Lamentations
1:12—”Behold, and see, if there be any
Sorrow like unto his Sorrow!” The second
section moves on to the crucifixion: “He was
cut off out of the Land of the Living”
(Isaiah 53:8) but hints at the resurrection
to come (“But Thou didst not leave his Soul
in Hell”, Psalm 16:10). Sections three and
four celebrate the resurrection (“Let all
the Angels of God worship him”, Hebrews
1:6), then sections five and six announce
the preaching of the gospel (“Their Sound is
gone out into all Lands”, Romans 10:18).
Part II ends with unabashed joy, its text
skillfully assembled by Jennens from three
separate verses from Revelation:
“Hallelujah! for the Lord God Omnipotent
reigneth.”
The overall mood of Part III (numbers 40–47)
is one of thanksgiving. Jennens combined Old
and New Testaments for the opening text,
drawn from Job and First Corinthians: “I
know that my Redeemer liveth…For now is
Christ risen from the Dead.” First
Corinthians continues to provide much of the
remaining text, including the prophecy that
“The trumpet shall sound, and the Dead shall
be rais’d incorruptible” (15:52–4.) Towards
the end a long contemplative aria “If God be
for us, who can be against us?” takes its
reassurance from Romans 8:31–4, and
Revelation 5:12–14 provides the closing
peroration “Worthy is the Lamb…Glory and
Pow’r be unto Him that sitteth upon the
Throne.”
Thus the words. Now it was Handel’s turn to
clothe Jennens’s masterful compilation with
music that was not only entertaining, but
also compelling. He was more than up to the
task. By 1741 George Frideric Handel was an
English institution, resident for thirty
years, citizen for the past fourteen years,
a robust (if not always altogether healthy)
man in his mid-fifties. As a self-employed
freelance musician, responsible to the
dictates of the public rather than the
directives of courtly or clerical patrons,
he had seen his full share of triumph and
failure, boom and bust, hits and flops. As
recently as 1737 he had suffered a sickening
financial loss from the collapse of an opera
season in which he was a partner, followed
by a ‘palsy’ (probably a stroke) that left
him temporarily without the use of his right
hand. Showing his customary powers of
recuperation, he not only regained his
health but also his financial footing.
Nothing seemed to keep him down for long;
Handel was tough, resilient, and supremely
confident in his ability to produce music
that met public approval.
He had good reason for that confidence. As
far back as 1710 his first London visit had
resulted in the blockbuster hit Rinaldo and,
for decades, he had produced a steady stream
of Italian operas in addition to a sizeable
catalog of instrumental music, including the
beloved Water Music and Music for the Royal
Fireworks, concerti grossi, keyboard suites,
chamber works, church music, chamber
cantatas, and more. His non-theatrical
enterprises kept him afloat during the 1730s
as the Italian opera craze subsided, leaving
Handel searching for another high-profit
genre that could restore his endangered
fortunes. He didn’t have to look very far:
the oratorio stood ready to provide him with
the next stage in his career. He was no
newcomer to the genre; as far back as 1707
he had written Il trionfo del Tempo e del
Disinganno for his Roman patron Cardinal
Pamphili, and the flamboyant La Resurrezione
the following year. Early in his English
residency he wrote Acis and Galatea and
Esther for the Duke of Chandos. As the 1730s
progressed, oratorios made up a steadily
expanding share of his output: Deborah and
Athalia in 1733, Alexander’s Feast and Ode
for St. Cecilia’s Day in 1736, Saul and
Israel in Egypt in 1739, and most recently
1740’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il
Moderato, to texts adapted from John Milton
by Charles Jennens.
So it was a seasoned veteran who determined
that Jennens’s new libretto would be ideal
for a forthcoming Dublin concert series
scheduled to begin in late 1741. Handel
started composing Messiah on August 22 and
completed the manuscript on September
14—that’s 24 days, or three and a half
weeks. Such speed has typically left
commentators nonplussed if not downright
confounded: how could anybody write a work
of Messiah’s length in such an incredibly
short time? That Messiah contains quite
modest amounts of recycled or borrowed
material only exacerbates commentarial
befuddlement. Here and there awkward
scansion betrays a repurposed melody, such
as “For unto us a Child is born”—originally
“Nò, di voi non vo fidarmi”, a duet from a
recent cantata. But on the whole, Messiah is
original work. So how did Handel write it so
quickly?
The answer is far simpler than one might
expect, and has nothing to do with romantic
notions of divine inspiration, sleep
deprivation, starvation, or tearstained
manuscripts. Handel always composed quickly;
speed is a basic survival skill for any
hardworking theatrical composer in any era,
and Handel was nothing if not a survivor. He
was a past master at turning out yards upon
yards of finished manuscript on schedule and
to specification, and even considering the
unusual challenges posed by Messiah, a
libretto fundamentally unlike any he had
ever set before, three and a half weeks from
start to finish is impressive but altogether
believable. Nor did he find the process
particularly tiring, given that he wrote the
gigantic oratorio Samson in a mere six weeks
immediately after completing Messiah.
Speedy, yes; formulaic, no. Messiah is no
dutiful progression of recitatives followed
by arias but rather a skillful blend of
vocal forms and genres, sometimes blurring
the customary boundaries between recitative,
aria, and chorus. Consider Part I Section 4,
in which an instrumental Pifa, or pastoral
serenade, introduces the angels announcing
the Messiah’s birth to the shepherds, from
Luke 2:8–14. Two traditional operatic secco
recitatives (chords punctuate line endings)
alternate with accompagnato style, the
orchestra mimicking the fluttering of angel
wings, leading directly into the chorus
“Glory to God.” Part II’s “How beautiful are
the feet” explores the possibility of
blending chorus with soloist, especially in
Handel’s original 1742 Dublin version, set
as a duet with choral interjections.
Throughout Messiah, Handel changes key,
tempo, meter, and mode as best serves the
text—such as the dramatic shifts throughout
“But who may abide the day of his coming” in
Part I. Saving the best for last, Handel
treats the concluding numbers—44 through
47—as one sustained movement, almost in the
manner of a recitative-free operatic finale.
For his Dublin series, booked in the city’s
shiny new Music Hall on Fishamble Street,
Handel planned an ambitious program of
recent hits as well as old favorites. He
presented L’Allegro on December 23, Acis and
Galatea and the Ode on January 20. Esther
and Alexander’s Feast followed on January 30
and February 13, respectively. For the March
concert version of Imeneo the company was
joined by singer/actress Susannah Cibber,
shortly to achieve immortality as the first
contralto ever to perform Messiah: that came
about on Tuesday, April 13, 1742.
…Words are wanting to express the exquisite
Delight it afforded to the admiring crouded
Audience. The Sublime, the Grand, and the
Tender, adapted to the most elevated,
majestick and moving Words, conspired to
transport and charm the ravished Heart and
Ear.
Thus the Dublin Journal, snagging the honors
of posting the very first of uncountable
Messiah reviews, on April 17, 1742. Another
less formal appraisal came from the Reverend
Dr. Delaney, so taken with Mrs. Cibber’s
performance of “He was despisèd” that he
exclaimed “Woman, for this, be all thy sins
forgiven!” Dublin heard Messiah twice more,
in May and June; Handel departed for London
on August 17, determined to recapture the
affection of a London public that had cooled
towards him in recent years.
Handel returned to a London that was riding
a wave of religious piety, thanks to the
energies of John and Charles Wesley,
Anglican revivalists whose influence ran
towards the puritanical, in particular
regarding that perennial scapegoat of
evangelical reformers, the popular theater.
Handel, ever sensitive to the overall public
temperature, decided to hold off from
introducing Messiah and chose instead to
re-establish his London presence with the
new Samson, given six performances starting
on February 18th, 1743. Handel had become
fed up with the verbal transgressions of
Italian-born singers whose glutinous English
diction morphed his libretti into a gummy
mishmosh of vowels, so he preferred to cast
actor-singers such as Susannah Cibber and
Kitty Clive, whose clear diction and stage
skills made up for any perceived vocal
shortcomings. Despite a few brickbats tossed
by an unamused Horace Walpole on just that
issue (“he has hired all the goddesses from
farces and the singers of Roast Beef from
between the acts at both theaters”), the
Samson performances were warmly received.
Thus emboldened, Handel scheduled another
series of six oratorio concerts featuring
the same company; they would begin on March
16 with a repeat of Samson followed by a
revival of L’Allegro on the 18th, with
Messiah set for its London premiere on
Wednesday, March 23. In a fit of uncertainty
about potential backlash from Anglican
right-wingers, Handel chose to advertise it
only as ‘A New Sacred Oratorio’, rather than
referring to it by name.
But the oratorio’s identity and subject
matter were known about town nonetheless,
and the same day (March 19) as Handel’s
advertisement appeared, the Universal
Spectator published a letter signed with the
pseudonym ‘Philalethes’—i.e., lover of
truth.
But it seems the Old Testament is not to be
prophan’d alone, nor God by the Name of
Jehovah only, but the New must be join’d
with it, and God by the most sacred the most
merciful name of Messiah; for I’m inform’d
than an Oratorio call’d by that Name has
already been perform’d in Ireland, and is
soon to be perform’d here: What the Piece
itself is, I know not, and therefore shall
say nothing about it; but I must again ask,
If the Place and Performers are fit?
The tone is respectful but the message is
clear enough: the objection was not so much
to the oratorio, but rather to the blending
of theater with religion. Philalethes’s
prissy squeamishness was not necessarily
shared by all London, made clear enough by a
tart rejoinder that appeared in the
Spectator on March 31:
Cease, Zealots, cease to blame these
Heav’nly Lays,
For Seraphs fit to sing Messiah’s Praise!
Nor, for your trivial Argument, assign,
‘The theatre not fit for Praise Divine.’
The issue was to dog London’s reception of
Messiah for years to come. Whether the
London premiere was even successful or not
remains a bit uncertain, although the Earl
of Shaftesbury states firmly that Messiah
“was but indifferently relish’d.” Subsequent
outings were few and far between during the
1740s—only twice for a 1745 revival, and
then in 1749 a single Maundy Thursday
performance at Covent Garden. But in May
1749 Handel arranged a midday charity
concert for the “Hospital for the
Maintenance and Education of Exposed and
Deserted Young Children”, better known as
the Foundling Hospital. At this point
fortune suddenly smiled on Handel’s
undervalued oratorio. Handel had donated an
organ to the Hospital’s chapel, and it was
for the instrument’s dedication that he
arranged a performance of the complete
Messiah for May 1, 1750. The association
with charity proved to be the oratorio’s
turning point, as sellout crowds cheered.
From then on anti-Messiah grumbling faded
away. Handel would produce Messiah at both
Covent Garden and the Foundling Hospital on
a yearly basis for the rest of his life; he
died on April 14, 1759 in the interval
between the April and May concerts. Thus the
Covent Garden performance of April 6, 1759
was Handel’s last time to hear his ugly
duckling turned swan. By then, Messiah had
become a cherished fixture of the Easter
season; only during the 19th century did it
become traditional Christmas fare.
There can be no single, absolutely
authoritative version of Messiah. Handel was
quick to revise, rewrite, and rework as
necessary to meet the needs of a particular
performer or venue, and from 1742 through
the early 1750s the oratorio underwent
numerous and often significant changes. To
take one particularly notable example, for
the 1743 London premiere Handel replaced
Part I’s accompanied recitative “And lo, the
angel of the Lord came upon them”—it leads
up to the “Glory to God” chorus—with an
arioso custom tailored for Kitty Clive.
Since Mrs. Clive was not featured in
Handel’s later performances, neither was the
arioso; nowadays one encounters it only in
the appendices of the better editions. Other
performers necessitated other changes, for
example the substantial revisions Handel
made to accomodate the castrato Gaetano
Guadagni, who performed the work from 1750
onwards. Although the Messiah revisions are
convoluted and confusing (John Tobin devoted
an entire monograph to the subject, 1964’s
Handel at Work), a standardized Messiah has
evolved that generally conforms to the score
as Handel performed it in the 1750s. But the
variants offer abundant opportunity for
exploration, such as a recent recording that
proudly declares itself as reproducing the
1742 Dublin original.
So, finally, the question: why Messiah? Why
wasn’t Bach’s Christmas Oratorio adopted for
sing-it-yourself festivals, or the St.
Matthew Passion at Eastertime? Those pieces
are revered and respected—but it is Messiah
that has joined hands with Santa Claus,
Messiah that everybody can whistle, Messiah
that inspired the Hallelujah Hustle. That’s
actually quite understandable, for alone of
the great sacred choral works of modern
music—Bach’s masses and passions, Mozart’s
and Haydn’s masses, Beethoven’s Missa
solemnis and the Verdi Requiem—Messiah
stands apart as having at least one foot in
homey, popular theater. Messiah does not
call upon us to repent, to anguish, or to
ponder: its raison d’être is to offer
reassurance. It was created to provide
pleasure and entertainment, and if it
managed to tuck a bit of spiritual renewal
into the mix, so much the better. The
theatricality that caused so much
consternation in the 1740s has proven to be
Messiah’s greatest strength in the long run.
There’s something fundamentally friendly
about it, something instinctively loveable
and approachable. So it thrives—in churches,
community centers, concert halls, and high
school gymnasiums; on records, on the radio,
in movies, on TV, even on YouTube.
Eighteenth-century historian Charles Burney
recounts an incident at the Dublin premiere
in which orchestra leader Matthew Dubourg
became hopelessly lost during a solo in one
of the arias. Somehow he stumbled back to
the proper key, at which point Handel
bellowed out lustily: “You are welcome home,
Mr. Dubourg!”
You are welcome home. That’s the key to
Messiah—beloved, reassuring, and familiar,
it offers living proof that great art is for
all people, in all times, and in all places.
The Roubiliac statue on Handel’s tomb in
Westminster Abbey shows him holding the
score to Messiah. He needs no other epitaph.
CITATION
"Handel's
Messiah'" Scott Foglesong,
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. 2013.
http://www.philharmonia.org/. Nov/Dec.
2013
<http://www.philharmonia.org/december-program-notes-handels-messiah/>. |
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