As I noted in my last blog there are many pieces of great music that I enjoy each year at Christmastide – Bach’s
Christmas Oratorio, Telemann’s
Festive Suite, Corelli’s
Concerto Grosso Number 8 ( often called
The Christmas Concerto) and many, many more – but above them all towers Handel’s great masterpiece The
Messiah. Undeniably, like Bach’s
St Matthew Passion, it is one of the very great musical works. It is, however, like other great pieces, more than simply a good piece of music. Just as with Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony, Bach’s
B Minor Mass, Bach’s
St Matthew Passion or the Mozart
Requiem it is something that reminds us what it is to be human – just small spots in a vast cosmos – and it confirms to everyone, I believe, even those of no religious affiliation or view, that there is something deeper and more significant about Christmas than just torn wrapping paper, bottles of wine, Christmas stockings or turkey and stuffing. The
Messiah reminds us of what we are about – or should be about - for those few days in dark December whilst much of mankind watches TV shows and binges on his and her excesses.
Although the Messiah never usually comes out in our house before the beginning of Advent this year this is not strictly true. For weeks now Pat has been practising. Every other year her choir – the Ruddington & District Choral Society - do a “community, sing along” Messiah in our local church – St Peter’s. This year, however, it is different. It is not a sing along Messiah, where the audience can join in if they wish, but a full concert version. So, for weeks, the Messiah has been a constant background in Pat’s car radio as she practises her soprano part while she drives along! The community Messiah is a highlight of the choir’s year and the church is always filled – for many villagers, like ourselves, it signals the real start of Christmas. But this year’s concert version, however, is extra special. The reason? – the Choir is fifty years old this year – and fifty years ago the Messiah was the first work that the newly formed choir sang in far back December 1962. Today, fifty years later, Pat produces the choir programme and I write the programme notes so in the past few weeks we have been putting final touches to the document. It is now at the printers.
Researching the background to Handel’s great work has been both rewarding and enlightening. I am always reminded, as I write the notes for a choir concert, of one of the great qualities and virtues of all music – be it pop, classical or any other. It is that when we listen to a piece of music, which might have been written many years before, it links us directly to that point in time when it was first heard - we are hearing what audiences listened to many hundreds of years ago when the notes were first played or sung. Our ears are their ears. If it is a piece written in our own lifetime then there is an extra dimension - then we are hearing the same thing that we first heard as a youngster or a teenager and it reconnects us with our own past. It is, in short like touching, the past. This is true of many aspects of the arts – great paintings, old books, old buildings – they all mysteriously connect us with the past and with the people who first saw them or listened to or read them. The other night Pat and I sat watching a programme on TV about the Beach Boys pop group of the 1960’s – one of our favourites when we were younger. To hear again some of their songs transported us back to the sights, sounds, feelings, emotions, hopes and fears, tastes, smells of half a century ago – just for a few minutes and we listened to “Surfin USA, Fun, Fun. Fun, Good Vibrations and all the others in the Beach Boys repertoire we were no longer senior citizens but reliving our misspent youth! Music has that peculiar power. And with something like the Messiah or a piece of Bach or Beethoven, although we cannot experience what the audience who first heard it experienced and thought, we can just get a little glimmer of their lives, aspirations and ambitions – and of course what wafted into their ears all those years ago. A powerful medium indeed.
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| Hot off the press - the programme |
The Messiah research was no exception in this - and the more that I read, the more I felt a real link with all those years ago when it was first written and performed – and indeed with the thousands of performances that have since taken place in all parts of the world. I also discovered that the story of the Messiah – and indeed I would guess of any other piece of music – tells us much about the people and places of the time – as well as giving us information about the composer or the piece.
I have seen and listened to the
Messiah more times than I could possibly guess at. Indeed, it is one of the formative influences on my life – an almost “road to Damascus” experience which brought me to classical music as a teenager (see blog:
http://arbeale.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/i-have-always-been-surprised-and.html). In the many performances I have seen and heard many stand out – often for the strangest of reasons. Twenty years ago Pat and I were holidaying in Florence. It was Easter and we passed a church outside of which was advertised a performance of the
Messiah. We went along that night and sat like many others on the cold stone floor surrounded by great Italian works of art that decorated the church. Throughout the three hour performance ordinary Italians popped in and out – many simply walking their dogs but grabbing a few minutes of wonderful music at the same time. It was quite magical. And then as the opening bars of the "Hallelujah Chorus" struck up from the little orchestra, all the Brits in the church suddenly made themselves known – as if a switch had been pressed. We all stood to attention in the time honoured manner! Italians looked in confusion at what was happening when a third of the audience rose in unison and stood proud! Magic!
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| St Peter's Church Langton |
The story of the Messiah is a rich mixture of national history, the great and the good and the everyday. It stretches from great opera houses and theatres to tiny villages; its story includes Kings and humble villagers; it encompasses the great sopranos and tenors as well as the keen amateur musician and singer. It is a Christmas piece and an Easter favourite, but it is also a piece for all seasons; it is a piece to give us national pride and at the same time something for “everyday country folk”.
My research on the
Messiah began not a few weeks ago or even a few months ago as this concert began to be planned. I simply came across a bit of the
Messiah "jig saw" by accident one day about three years ago. I went, one afternoon, to visit a trainee teacher who
I was supervising as she did her teaching practice in a small village school in Leicestershire. After watching her teach we retired to the school staff room to discuss her lesson. On the notice board there was a notice advertising a performance of the
Messiah in the local church and as I read the notice I noticed that the performance included some very well known, international singers. I wondered how the church in so small a village could afford such great names - and then I read the small print. It was to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the first church performance of the
Messiah in England
- the great and the good of the singing world were celebrating a very special event. The school was in the tiny village of Church Langton, the church was just across the road.
In the Spring of 1759, only a few weeks after Handel had died in London, a Leicestershire man, Church Langton resident and philanthropist, the Rev. William Hanbury, paid £500 for an organ to be built and transported to the local church of St Peter’s in his village - mid way between Leicester and Market Harborough. It is about 40 miles away from Ruddington, where I live. According to local records, the sound of the organ was a terrifying
prospect “....some of the common people were frighted and hurried out of the church with all speed....they thought the Day of Judgement was really come indeed.....” After the tumult has died down and the villagers had become used to the sounds of the organ and other instruments brought by Hanbury, the very first performance of the
Messiah was given in an English parish church - on September 26
th 1759. In the two day Handel musical festival that followed in the village records tell us that
“the countryside flocked to the performance...accommodation of all kinds was at a premium, the price of food was nearly tripled, there were more than two hundred chariots, landaus and post chaises....” This little snippet of local history and music represents well, perhaps, the bigger tale of the music of Handel and especially that of
Messiah.
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| William Hanbury |
Hanbury was a wealthy man with great ambitions and aspirations and he not only began the Messiah's church performance. He had plans to build a Minster to rival the great York Minster in his village. He never realised that dream but he did endow his village with other things - most notably the school in which I had sat that afternoon and watched that young teacher teach. It was and still is known as the Hanbury School and was
"founded for the education and religious instruction of boys and girls of this parish".
But back to Messiah. It was composed in 1741 based on a scriptural text compiled by Charles Jennens from the King James Bible, the Psalms and the Book of Common Prayer. Jennens, too, was a Leicestershire man - he lived only a few miles from Church Langton. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742, and received its London premier nearly a year later. After a modest public reception in London, the oratorio quickly gained in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known and most frequently performed choral works in Western music.
Handel, of course, was a German – he became a naturalised Englishman and in his life time became almost more English than the English. He walked with Kings and composed some of the very great state music – much of it still with us. His Water Music, for example was played this year as the Royal Barge floated down the Thames in the Queen’s Jubilee Year - as it played in 1717 for George 1st as he cruised down the Thames. This week we have heard of the coming birth of a future King or Queen – the child of Prince William and Kate Middleton. As the crown is placed in that child’s head many years from now the music that will be played will be that of Handel – Zadok the Priest. Handel's impact on the life of his adopted country was and still is huge. But although Handel walked with Kings he had to earn his crust and he composed furiously to earn a living. He was something of an impresario – putting on operas at a great rate. He owned shares in theatres – he was almost the Andrew Lloyd Webber of his day! His fortunes went up and down and although he died a wealthy and respected man, like everyone else, he suffered success and failure. In an echo of today’s economically challenged times he lost a huge amount of money with the financial banking scandal known as the South Sea Bubble and, just as today, the fickle world of music with its ever changing fashions forced him to continually rethink his approach.
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| Handel at the time he wrote Messiah |
By the late 1730’s interest in grand Italian opera was declining – there was a move towards English language productions and although Handel continued to write and produce great opera he increasingly moved towards the English oratorio. In July 1741 Charles Jennens, a friend of Handel, sent him a new libretto for an oratorio, and in a letter said: "I hope he [Handel] 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".
The music for Messiah was completed in 24 days of swift composition. Having received Jennens' text sometime after 10 July 1741, Handel began work on it on 22 August. His records show that he had completed it in draft by 12 September, followed by two days of "filling up" to produce the finished work on 14 September.
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| Charles Jennens - who gave us the words |
The score's 259 pages show some signs of haste such as blots, scratchings-out, unfilled bars and other uncorrected errors, but according to the music scholars the number of errors is remarkably small in a document of this length. At the end of his manuscript Handel wrote "SDG"—Soli Deo Gloria, "To God alone the glory". This inscription, taken with the speed of composition, has encouraged belief that Handel wrote the music in a fervour of divine inspiration in which, as he wrote the "Hallelujah Chorus”, "he saw all heaven before him". The reality is perhaps more worldy! Many of Handel's compositions were composed within similar timescales – they had to be squeezed between theatrical and operatic seasons. There is significant evidence that Handel’s finances were at a low, fashions were changing and he needed a new idea to boost his bank account! In short, for Handel and other musicians of the day, time was money!
Handel agreed to give a season of six concerts in Dublin in the winter of 1741–42 following an invitation from the Duke of Devonshire, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and in early March it was further agreed to give a charity concert in April 1742 - the premier of Messiah.
He had been given permission from St Patrick's and Christ Church Cathedrals to use their choirs for this occasion - a total of 16 men and 16 boy choristers; several of the men were allocated solo parts. The women soloists were Christina Maria Avoglio and Susannah Cibber, an established stage actress and contralto, who had sung for Handel before. The charities that were to benefit were prisoners' debt relief, the Mercer's Hospital, and the Charitable Infirmary. In its report on a public rehearsal, the Dublin News-Letter described the oratorio as "...far surpass[ing] anything of that Nature which has been performed in this or any other Kingdom". Seven hundred people attended the premiere on 13 April. So that the largest possible audience could be admitted gentlemen were requested to remove their swords, and ladies were asked not to wear hoops in their dresses. The performance earned unanimous praise from the assembled press: "Words are wanting to express the exquisite delight it afforded to the admiring and crowded Audience" said one newssheet. A Dublin clergyman, Rev. Delaney, was so overcome by Susanna Cibber's rendering of the aria "He was despised" that reportedly he leapt to his feet and cried: "Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee!" The takings amounted to around £400, providing about £127 to each of the three nominated charities and securing the release of 142 indebted prisoners.
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The Fishamble Music Hall in Dublin
where the Messiah was first performed |
This warm reception to Messiah however, was not quite repeated in London when Handel introduced the work at the Covent Garden theatre in March 1743. The first performance was overshadowed by the view that the work's subject-matter was too exalted to be performed in a theatre, particularly by secular singer-actresses such as Cibber. In an attempt to deflect such sensibilities Handel avoided the name “Messiah” and presented the work as the "New Sacred Oratorio". Although the custom of standing for the "Hallelujah Chorus” originates from a belief that, at the London premier, King George II did so, there is no convincing evidence that the King was actually present. However, the first reference to the practice of standing appears in a letter dated 1756 – by which time the King had certainly witnessed the oratorio so there may be some truth in the tale.
During the 1750s
Messiah was performed increasingly at festivals and cathedrals throughout the country and after Handel's death, performances were given in Florence, New York, Hamburg and Mannheim - where Mozart first heard it. These were still relatively small affairs involving twenty or thirty singers in the manner originally scored by Handel rather than grand “theatre” productions.
But by 1784 a fashion for larger-scale performances began with a series of commemorative concerts of Handel's music given in Westminster Abbey under the patronage of King George III. A plaque on the Abbey wall records that "The Band consisting of DXXV [525] vocal & instrumental performers was conducted by Joah Bates Esqr." In 1787 further performances were given at the Abbey; advertisements promised, "The Band will consist of Eight Hundred Performers". By the mid nineteenth century performances had become increasingly grandiose. Messiah was presented in New York in 1853 with a chorus of 300 and in Boston in 1865 with more than 600. In Britain a performance held at the Crystal Palace in 1857 had 2,000 singers and an orchestra of 500!
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| Handel's autograph on the first score |
Everyone, it seemed, wanted to get on the Messiah bandwagon! There were, however, growing dissenting voices towards the grand scale production. George Bernard Shaw commented, "Why, instead of wasting huge sums on the multitudinous dullness ..... does not somebody set up a thoroughly rehearsed and exhaustively studied performance of the Messiah with a chorus of twenty capable artists? Most of us would be glad to hear the work seriously performed once before we die." Bernard Shaw’s plea was increasingly heard and although the huge-scale oratorio tradition was perpetuated by large ensembles such as the Royal Choral Society, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Huddersfield Choral Society in the 20th century, there were increasingly calls for performances more faithful to Handel's smaller concept.
Despite the popularity of the large scale production the tide was turning. The conductor Sir Thomas Beecham wrote that "after the heyday of Victorian choral societies.....[there was a] rapid and violent reaction against monumental performances....... [the Messiah] should be played and heard as in the days between 1700 and 1750".
And in the intervening years, the Messiah has increasingly “come home” – to village hall and parish church. We now have “sing along” Messiahs, hugely popular community Messiahs like our own Ruddington biennial concerts; at the turn of the Millenium, choir members from throughout Nottinghamshire filled Southwell Minister to sing, and be inspired as the 21st century began by the well loved words and music. And what was begun in Dublin by Handel and continued only a few weeks after the composer’s death in St Peter’s, Church Langton by the Reverend Hanbury will be continued over 250 years later in our own St Peters here in Ruddington. And, of course, it will be being heard and sung in churches and village halls throughout the country. It has come full circle – to a village church in the middle of England just as Hanbury dreamed of when he listened that Messiah in his own village church in the middle of England in 1759.
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St Peter's in Ruddington where we will
again listen to the great work |
As I rounded off my programme notes I commented that: “
We cannot, tonight, promise you the Day of Judgement feared by the villagers of Church Langton and we hope that you will not rush from our own St Peter’s “frighted” as did those villagers in 1759! We cannot promise that your sins will be forgiven as was promised to contralto Sussana Cibber in Dublin! We do not anticipate having to ask gentlemen to remove their swords of ladies remove their skirt hoops as Handel did almost three centuries ago! And we sincerely hope the price of food in Ruddington does not triple or the “village be filled with landaus and post chaises” because of our concert! But we do promise you the greatest oratorio ever written with which to begin your Christmas and, indeed, the next fifty years of the Ruddington and District Choral Society.” And
in a week or two when I sit at the back of the church, having done my duty by selling tickets on the door, and my wife takes her place amongst the sopranos as they file to their places at the front of the church to begin the performance I will, undoubtedly, reflect on the history of this monumental work. I'll think of the men removing their swords in Dublin; the ladies being very immodest by not having hoops in the skirts; and the village of Church Langton filling up with "
more than two hundred chariots, landaus and post chaises" and wonder if I will be brave enought to stand up in the middle of the performance and shout to the contralto
"Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee"! May be not! What I will undoubtedly reflect upon is how this work has been such a part of my life and indeed the life of the nation for so many years.
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Handel as a wealthy and
successful man just before his death |
And, this weekend, as Advent began, we once again switched on our CD player and listened again to the Messiah and to the other great music signalling the start of Christmas. As we hurtled up the M6 motorway last weekend, the Messiah’s musical message filled our car. Music while you move, at speeds that would have terrified Mr Handel – he could never have dreamed of such a thing, in even his wildest dreams! The Messiah, I have, no doubt, will fill our lounge, again, in a week or two when we put up our Christmas decorations. What would Handel have thought of that – his music being relayed electronically and instantly available on little silver discs in homes throughout the world! And when he wrote his masterpiece I don’t think that he ever could have forecast the impact that it would have over hundreds of years in tiny village halls and churches like St Peter’s Church Langton and St Peter’s Ruddington (they are only a few miles apart) and in great concert halls throughout the world. I don’t expect he could have ever believed that audiences would stand to attention – even in cities like far off Florence - two hundred and fifty years after his death when his “Halleluiah Chorus” was sung. I don’t suppose that he could have ever have imagined that for many, like me, the opening bars of the Messiah would signal, that Christmas is again with us. What a wonderful heritage he – and other composers (yes, including the Beach Boys!) - have left us! Maybe, on reflection Handel knew what he was doing when he inscribed his masterpiece SDG - Soli Deo Gloria, "To God alone the glory".
