A Charitable View of Handel’s Messiah
“…but the greatest of these is Charity”
King James Bible, 1 Corinthians 13:13
Handel in London, 1741
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In 1741, George Frederick Handel was at a low ebb. He was born and raised in Germany and travelled extensively in Italy as a young man, but had lived mostly in England since 1712. His specialty had been Italian vocal works, especially large-scale operas with Italian soloists. Handel had moved to England when this kind of work had been popular, but after John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera in 1728, opera was no longer fashionable. Deidamia, Handel’s final Italian opera, had closed after just three performances. Handel’s debts were enormous and he was suffering from rheumatism and the after-effects of a fairly severe stroke. It was widely speculated that he was going to return to Germany despite the opinion of Prince Friedrich of Prussia (expressed in a 1737 letter) that “Handel’s great days are over, his inspiration is exhausted, and his taste behind the fashion.” Handel gave what he considered to be his farewell concert on April 8th and, at the age of 56, contemplated retirement. No productions of Handelian works were planned for the coming London season.
That summer, Charles Jennens, a wealthy literary scholar who had previously supplied Handel with texts for Saul and Israel in Egypt, sent him a new and quite unusual libretto. It consisted of a sequence of excerpts from the Old and New Testaments of the King James Bible and from the Book of Common Prayer, organized to be a kind of commentary on the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Jennens described his motivation in a letter to a friend:
Handel says he will do nothing next Winter, but I hope I shall persuade him to set another Scripture collection I have made for him, and perform it for his own Benefit in Passion week. I hope he will lay out his whole Genius and Skill upon it, that the Composition may excell all his former Compositions, as the Subject excells every other Subject. The Subject is Messiah.
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Handel must have had reservations about the project Jennens was proposing. He was a pious Christian but was not known as a composer of liturgical works. He knew that some ecclesiastical authorities would be scandalized by a theatrical performance of holy texts about Christ by music-hall singers with notorious moral reputations. To work around the Bishop of London’s restrictions against opera performance during Lent and to minimize production expenses, Handel had produced several English-language oratorios—essentially, bare-bone operas without scenery, costumes or actions—and some of these, like Saul and Israel in Egypt, had been based on biblical incidents; but these works had dramatic characters and story lines, and were intended as entertainments, not as devotional works. He must have wondered how enthusiastic his secular and sophisticated London audience would be about going to the theatre for a musical contemplation on the life of Jesus.
But that summer Handel had also received a request from William Cavendish, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to produce in Dublin a series of his works to raise money for various local charities, and he was commissioned to compose a new work for this series. It is almost certainly because of this fortuitous coincidence that Handel decided to go ahead and compose music for the Messiah libretto. Dublin was a less sophisticated venue than London and the charitable aims of the enterprise would defuse both ecclesiastical and secular reservations about the concept of a sacred oratorio.
Handel must have realized that such an endeavour would be something of a gamble, with his career and legacy as a composer hanging in the balance. He had established himself as a man of the theatre, but if Messiah were going to be a success, it had to be inspiring and not merely entertaining.
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Handel entered the study in his house at 25 Brook Street near Hanover Square on August 22nd and began composing music for Jennens’s libretto. He didn’t emerge from his study until 24 days later, with the 260-page manuscript of Messiah, including orchestration, completed. This extraordinary compositional facility was actually not unusual for Handel; he had composed his Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day in only nine days and, when working on the opera Rinaldo, his first success in England, the librettist had complained that Handel could compose music faster than he could write lyrics. Nor had Handel exhausted himself in the composing of Messiah. A few days later, the apparently rejuvenated composer began work on Samson, an even more substantial oratorio based on Milton’s epic poem, for eventual performance in London.
Messiah in Dublin, 1741–2
When Handel arrived in Dublin in November of 1741, he brought with him the music for Messiah and was soon joined by the renowned soprano Christina Avoglio and alto Susannah Maria Cibber, who was an established actress. A series of performances of smaller and older works in the new Musick Hall on Fishamble Street went well. But then the Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the redoubtable Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels and the satirical essay A Modest Proposal, vetoed the use of cathedral choristers for Messiah:
It hath been reported that I gave a licence to certain vicars to assist at a club of fiddlers in Fishamble Street. I do hereby annul and vacate the said licence, intreating my said Sub-Dean and chapter to punish such vicars as shall ever appear there, as songsters, fiddlers, pipers, trumpeters, drummers, drum-majors, or in any sonal quality, according to the flagitious aggravations of their respective disobedience, rebellion, perfidy and ingratitude.
It was soon realized that Swift was going insane; he was relieved of his duties and the veto rescinded.
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The first performance of Messiah was announced in the Dublin Journal on March 27th as follows:
For the relief of Prisoners in the several Gaols, and for the Support of Mercer’s Hospital in Stephen’s Street, and of the Charitable Infirmary on the Inns Quay, on Monday the 12th of April, will be performed at the Musick Hall on Fishamble Street, Mr Handel’s new Grand Oratorio call’d the Messiah, in which the Gentlemen of the Choirs of both Cathedrals will assist, with some Concertos on the Organ by Mr Handel.
The performance finally took place on April 13th, 1742. The chorus consisted of just 16 men and 16 boys from the cathedral choirs. The arias, duets, and recitatives were sung by Mrs. Avoglio, Mrs. Cibber, and men selected from the chorus. The orchestra was the Dublin State Band which was led by the brilliant English violinist Matthew Dubourg and consisted of a small string ensemble, with organ and violone continuo, and trumpets and tympani (but no oboes, horns, or bassoons). This was not as grand an ensemble as Handel was used to having in London, but he was apparently pleased with their musicality.
The premier performance of Messiah was an unqualified triumph. The Dublin Journal reviewed it thusly:
On Tuesday last, Mr Handel’s Sacred Grand Oratorio, the Messiah, was performed at the New Musick Hall in Fishamble Street; the best Judges allowed it to be the most finished piece of Musick. Words are wanting to express the exquisite Delight it afforded to the admiring crowded audience. The Sublime, the Grand, and the Tender, adopted to the most elevated, majestick and moving Words, conspired to transport and charm the ravished heart and ear. It is but Justice to Mr Handel, that the World should hear he generously gave the money arising from this Grand Performance, to be equally shared by the Society for relieving Prisoners, the Charitable Infirmary, and Mercer’s Hospital, for which they will ever gratefully remember his Name; and that the Gentlemen of the two Choirs, Mr Dubourg, Mrs Avoglio and Mrs Cibber, who all performed their parts to Admiration, acted also on the same disinterested Principle, satisfied with the deserved Applause of the Publick, and the conscious Pleasure of promoting such useful, and extensive Charity. There were about 700 People in the room and the Sum collected for that Noble and Pious Charity amounted to about £400 out of which £127 goes to each of the three great and pious Charities.
The money collected “for the relief of Prisoners in the several Gaols” by all the performances, £1225, was sufficient to free 142 prisoners from debtor’s prison; Handel, still deeply in debt, must have derived some wry satisfaction from this. The Musick Hall, built to seat 600, was able to hold 700 because a notice in the newspaper had requested that “ladies should not wear hoopskirts nor men their swords.” To satisfy the demands of music lovers who had not managed to attend the first performance, a second performance on June 3rd was hastily arranged.
Messiah in London, 1743–59
Handel returned to England and began to plan the first London performances of Messiah. He was so concerned about objections to theatrical performance of sacred text that he suppressed the word “Messiah” in advertisements and called it merely A New Sacred Oratorio. But this didn’t deter the ecclesiastical critics. They scheduled large teas and musical events to compete with the performances of Messiah, and hired boys to tear down the advertisements. An anonymous letter in the Universal Spectator explained the issue as follows.
An oratorio either is an Act of Religion, or it is not; if it is, I ask if the Playhouse is a fit Temple to perform it in, or a Company of Players fit Ministers of God’s Word, for in that Case such they are made. In the other Case, if it is not perform’d as an Act of Religion, but for Diversion and Amusement only (and indeed I believe few or none go to an oratorio out of Devotion), what a Prophanation of God’s Name and Word is this, to make so light use of them?
In this poisoned atmosphere, the performances in the Covent Garden Theatre-Royal on the 23rd to the 29th of March, 1743, were received with little enthusiasm, despite a more substantial orchestra and choir. The Earl of Shaftesbury, an associate of Handel, admitted in his memoirs that, “partly from the scruples some persons had entertained against carrying on such a performance in a Play House, and partly for not entering into the the genius of the composition, [Messiah] was but indifferently relish’d.” Even Charles Jennens, his pompous librettist, could say only, “’Tis in the main a fine composition, notwithstanding some weak parts, which he was too idle and too obstinate to retouch.” Revivals in 1745, 1749, and 1750 fared little better, despite several additions and alterations. It seemed Handel’s Messiah was going to share the fate of his 41 operas and dozens of other oratorios on the scrap heap.
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Finally, in May of 1750, the tide began to turn. The tipping point was a benefit performance for the new London Foundling Hospital. As in Dublin, supporting a good cause was sufficient justification to deflect ecclesiastical squeamishness and secular pseudo-sophistication. The success of this performance at the Foundling Hospital Chapel led to annual performances of the work to benefit the Hospital, and soon Messiah became a fixture throughout the English-speaking world and beyond. When Joseph Haydn first heard the Hallelujah chorus, he is said to have wept like a child and to have exclaimed that Handel is “the Master of us all.” Ludwig van Beethoven is reported by Edward Schulz, an English musician who visited Beethoven in 1816 and 1823, to have asserted that “Handel is the greatest composer that ever lived. I would bare my head and kneel at his tomb.”
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For hundreds of years, Messiah audiences in the English-speaking parts of the world have been rising to stand for performances of the Hallelujah chorus. This tradition is usually explained as having been initiated by King George II rising for some reason (and, following protocol, so too all his loyal subjects in attendance). In fact, there is little evidence for the purported incident; the first reference to it didn’t appear until 35 years later and in it the king doesn’t really play a significant role:
When that chorus struck up, they were so transported that they all, together with the king (who happened to be present), started up, and remained standing till the chorus ended.
Howsoever the tradition began, it seems that audiences have persisted with it as a sincere homage to Handel and to the “King of Kings” his music was celebrating.
George Frederick Handel died in London on April 14th 1759, seventeen years and a day after the premier performance of Messiah in Dublin and eight days after playing the harpsichord at a Messiah for the last time. By now, his sacred oratorio had finally been recognized by music critics as a masterpiece. Not all of the ecclesiastical critics were appeased: John Newton, the composer of Amazing Grace, preached every Sunday for a year against “secular” performances of holy scripture. Handel’s oratorio wasn’t necessarily welcome in sacred venues either; the Bishop of London forbade performances of Messiah in Westminster Abbey, where Handel himself was interred, well into the nineteenth century. Despite this, Handel’s monument has a fine life-size sculpture of the composer by L. F. Roubiliac holding the music of I know that my Redeemer liveth. The first performance of Messiah in an actual church was in the Cathedral at Hereford in 1759 as part of the Three Choirs Festival, soon after Handel’s death.