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December 2002 Program Notes
Messiah (III)
by Mary Burke
Here is a mental exercise for you: Try to imagine how many performances of Messiah will be given this year, in cities all around the world.
Now try to imagine how many performances of Messiah have been given since its 1741 premiere. Don't forget the recordings! My own best guess at the total is something like half to three quarters of a million.
Now try to imagine the number of words contained in all the program notes for all those performances—don't forget the liner notes for the recordings, and we should probably count the reviews as well. The result must surely be a cosmically huge figure, best left to people like Stephen Hawking.
Now consider further that some of those countless words were written by the likes of Charles Burney and George Bernard Shaw.
Between the vertigo induced by the numbers and the humility induced by Burney, Shaw, et al., I find myself simply too overwhelmed to contribute to the crushing weight of Messiah-related verbiage this year. Therefore, I have chosen the more economical path of recycling some notable remarks from superior pens:
[It] has been heard in all parts of the kingdom with increasing reverence and delight; it has fed the hungry, clothed the naked, fostered the orphan, and enriched succeeding managers of Oratories, more than any single musical production of this or any country.
—Charles Burney
Yesterday Mr. Handell's new Grand Sacred Oratorio, called, The MESSIAH, was rehearsed at the Musick-Hall in Fishamble Street, to a most Grand, Polite and crouded Audience; and was performed so well, that it gave universal Satisfaction to all present; and was allowed by the greatest Judges to be the finest Composition of Musick that ever was heard, and the sacred Words as properly adapted for the Occasion...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.
—The Dublin Journal (1742)
His Messiah has disappointed me, being set in great haste, tho' he said he would be a year about it, & make it the best of all his Compositions. I shall put no more Sacred Works into his hands, to be thus abus'd...I have with great difficulty made him correct some of the grossest faults in the composition, but he retain'd his Overture obstinately, in which there are some passages far unworthy of Handel, but much more unworthy of the Messiah...As to the Messiah, 'tis still in his power by retouching the weak parts to make it fit for a publick performance; and I have said a great deal to him on the Subject; but he is so lazy and so obstinate, that I much doubt the effect...
—Charles Jennens (Handel's librettist)
As Mr Handel in his oratorio's greatly excells all other Composers I am acquainted with, So in the famous one, called The Messiah he seems to have excell'd himself. The whole is beyond any thing I had a notion of till I Read and heard it. It seems to be a Species of Musick different from any other, and this is particularly remarkable of it. That tho' the Composition is very Masterly & artificial [i.e. artful], yet the Harmony is So great and open, as to please all who have Ears & will hear, learned & unlearn'd. Without a doubt this Superior Excellence is owing in some small measure to the great care & exactness which Mr Handel seems to have us'd in preparing this Piece.
—Dr. Edward Synge
If Handel's Messiah should be performed in London...I beg it as a favour to me, that you will go early, and take your wife with you, your time and money cannot be so well employed...As much as I detest fatigue and inconvenience, I would ride forty miles in the wind and rain to be present at a performance of the Messiah in London.
—Benjamin Victor (1752)
After these vast efforts of genius, we find him rising still higher in the three concluding Chorusses, each of which surpasses the preceding, till in the winding up of the Amen, the ear is fill'd with such a glow of harmony, as leaves the mind in a kind of heavenly extasy.
—Rev. John Mainwaring (Handel biographer, 1760)
The whole work...achieves a grandeur and unity, a kind of deeply founded repose and intensity, present in no other work treating the same subject...Devotion is present with such strength and spiritual health, everything is so geniune, grand, and whole, that one has a sense of being in the presence of an imperishable work of art and dedication.
—Eduard Hanslick
It is not exaggeration, so much as history, to point to "The Messiah" as almost the only work of art in being, which for one hundred years has steadily gone on rising higher and higher in fame...a creation of mortal imagining, which has almost won the reality of an article of belief and the solemnity of an object of worship, by its power to adapt itself to all intelligences, to touch the lowliest, to raise the loftiest, to content the most fastidious.
—The Edinburgh Review (1857)
I walked in the bright paths of sound, and liked it best when the long continuance of a chorus had made the ear insensible to the music, made it as if there was none...
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1843)
The fate of The Messiah has been in some ways harder still. The stupendous masterpiece in which Handel released Christianity from the bondage of fact, and wrote the romance of human redemption in characters of immortal fire, is now degraded to the level of a mild digestive...The ceremony of attending a performance of The Messiah is to the average Englishman as immutable a Christmas institution as going to church or eating a slice of turkey....It is not a sermon, but a song—a magnificent effort of the human imagination, exercised upon the greatest and most inspiring of conceivable subjects...By the side of imaginative flights of such measureless sublimity that they soar far beyond the ken of ordinary mortality, it contains passages so simple and direct that the dullest mind can comprehend them.
—R.A. Streatfield (1964)
If Handel...were confronted with the gigantic crowds of singers that now strive to interpret his music, he would at once cut them down to a quarter of their bloated dimensions or rewrite the orchestral portions of his scores for the largest combination of instruments he could lay his hands upon.
—Sir Thomas Beecham
To hear a thousand respectable young English persons...lumbering along with the Hallelujah as if it were a superior sort of family coach: all this is ludicrous enough; but when the nation proceeds to brag of these unwieldy choral impostures, these attempts to make the brute force of a thousand throats do what can only be done by artistic insight and skill, then I really lose patience. Why, instead of wasting huge sums on the multitudinous dullness of a Handel Festival, does not somebody set up a thoroughly rehearsed and exhaustively studied performance of The Messiah in St. James's Hall with a chorus of twenty capable artists? Most of us would be glad to hear the work seriously performed once before we die.
—George Bernard Shaw
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