George Frideric Handel's Messiah: Messiah

n 1712, George Frideric Handel moved permanently to England. Although he had a large and varied musical output, his reputation as a composer has been established mainly though his compositions of Italian opera. In the following years he subsequently wrote and presented more than 40 such operas in London theatres, and accumulated honors including a pension from the court of King George II, the office of Composer of Music for the Royal Chapel, and even a statue has been erected in his honor while he was still alive. In 1730, in response to the decline of popularity of Italian opera and the ascension of music produced in English, he turned to a new genre, the English oratorio. Messiah was Handel’s sixth work in this genre. Although its structure
Part I begins with the prophecies of Isaiah and moves towards the annunciation to the shepherds. In Part II, Handel concentrates on the Passion of Christ and ends with the “Hallelujah” chorus. Part III covers the second coming, the resurrection of the dead, and Christ’s glorification in heaven. The music for Messiah was completed within 24 days of swift composition. At the end of the 259 pages autograph score, Handel wrote the letters “SDG” – Soli Deo Gloria (To God Alone the Glory). The effort of writing so much music in such a short period of time was not unusual for Handel and his contemporaries, most of Handel’s large-scale works have been composed within a similar timeframe. Nevertheless, the short compositional time and the inscription have encouraged belief in the apocryphal story that Handel wrote the music in fervor of divine inspiration in which, as he wrote the “Hallelujah” chorus, “he saw all heaven before him”. Messiah was originally written for modest vocal and instrumental forces, with optional settings for many of the individual
Handel sought and received permission to use the choirs from St Patrick’s and Christ Church cathedrals for this occasion. These forces amounted to 16 men and 16 boy choristers, several of the men were allocated solo parts while two female soloists performed the Soprano and Mezzo-Soprano arias. The warm reception in Dublin was not repeated in London when Handel introduced the work at the Covent Garden theatre about a year later. The first performance was overshadowed by views expressed in the press that the work’s subject matter was too exalted to be performed in a theatre. In an attempt to deflect such sensibilities, Handel had avoided the name Messiah in London and presented the work as the “New Sacred Oratorio”. The custom of standing for the “Hallelujah” chorus originates from a belief that, at the London premiere, King George II did so, which would have obliged all to stand. Musicologists have found that there is no convincing evidence that the king was present, or that he attended any subsequent performance of Messiah. London’s initially cool reception led Handel to reduce the season’s planned six performances to only three, and not to present the work at all in