Handel's Messiah - Notes on the Program
2017 thru 2015
2017
Messiah with a Brogue
In my program notes for our performance of Messiah last year, I examined how Handel began composing oratorios in order to restore his flagging fortunes in the wake of the collapse of his Royal Academy of Music, with its focus on Italian-style operas. It is certainly true that the advent of the oratorio, which didn’t require expensive stage sets and costumes, provided Handel with the money that he needed to support himself and pay for musicians to present concerts of his work.
But to think that the arrival of the oratorio was a panacea for all of Handel’s financial woes is to underestimate the fickleness of eighteenth-century London audiences. First, Handel couldn’t quite give up on Italian opera. He had some success with Atalanta in 1736, but the following operas--Faramondo, Alessandro Severo, and Serse--didn’t find a large audience. So yet again, Handel returned to major choral works, presenting a series of oratorios both old and new in the 1739-40 concert season, including Saul and Israel in Egypt. But Handel’s great success with oratorios in the first part of the 1730s was not to be repeated, and by the close of the decade, he seems to have decided to retire from the challenging musical life of London and its inconstant audiences.
Enter William Cavendish, the Duke of Devonshire, who served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1737 to 1745. One in a long line of senior English aristocrats who served as a viceroy on behalf of the throne, Cavendish invited Handel to give a series of oratorio concerts in Dublin in support of several local charities for the 1741-42 season. Somewhat surprising for us today (with Dublin as the center of Catholic Ireland), Dublin had been a Protestant-majority city since the 1640s; during Cromwell’s Protectorate, Catholics were actually banned from living within the Dublin city limits. Dublin’s Anglo-Irish identity was a major feature of the Protestant Ascendancy, which had begun in Tudor times with the confiscation of Irish Catholic estates and their consequent sale to English Protestant loyalists. It was also a comparatively large city: Dublin was the second largest city in the growing British Empire—though at 123,000 in 1733, compared to nearly 700,000 in London, it was a distant second. With a wealthy gentry to support the arts, the music scene was rich and thriving, and there were plenty of well-trained musicians for Handel to present concerts during his nearly ten months in the Irish capital.
The Irish invitation quite unexpectedly changed Handel’s fortunes. Rather than retiring to a German spa, the composer was now facing a potentially lucrative season away from London. He would take with him several choral works that had served him well, including Acis and Galatea, the Ode for St Cecilia’s Day, and L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. Wanting to add a new oratorio to these, Handel had a ready answer in a libretto that Charles Jennens had sent him in June 1741--Messiah. With a planned arrival in November, he would need to work fast, part of the reason that he finished his greatest composition in only 24 days in August and September. But Handel’s work was not completely done: he would also compose a large part of the oratorio Samson in September and October before setting sail.
In this sense, the chicken and egg are somewhat reversed. It can sometimes sound as if Handel went to Dublin to give Messiah an “out of town trial,” having grown nervous over the critical reception in London. But, though Handel was certainly eager to escape London and its audiences, the invitation to Dublin was what precipitated the composition of Messiah, not the other way around. And although the work’s premiere performance was famously well-received by the Dublin concertgoers, Messiah was only one of many works performed between Handel’s first concert there on December 23, 1741 (276 years ago tonight) and his departure in mid-August 1742. In between, nearly a dozen Handel works were performed, including the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate, L’Allegro, Acis and Galatea, Esther, Alexander’s Feast, Imeneo, and Saul. The season was what might today be called a “Handel Festival,” featuring all of the city’s finest musicians, including a choir of men and boys comprising singers from Dublin’s two cathedrals. The premiere performance of Messiah was given in the very middle of the season, as a charity concert for Mercer’s Hospital and a “charitable infirmary,” as well as for the relief of prisoners in several Dublin jails, on April 13, 1742. The rest, we all know, is history.
Though perhaps not quite. Handel’s fair-weather fans in London weren’t quite finished toying with him. The composer returned to London with renewed confidence and planned to give a series of oratorio concerts like the ones he had presented in Dublin. But he found himself in the crossfire of contemporary religious sentiment. The “chapel movement” that would ultimately lead to Wesleyan Methodism was underway, and the thought of presenting such a sacred subject as Jesus’ life in a theater was offensive to many of these pious believers. Messiah was performed in March 1743 in London, though there was vigorous public debate about its appropriateness for the concert hall. It wouldn’t be until the 1750s, when Handel performed Messiah for the benefit of the Foundling Hospital, that Messiah’s choral hegemony was launched.
Christopher Hogwood captures perfectly the exquisite irony in the early resistance of the low church Anglicans to Handel’s Messiah. He writes, “It is curious that the very movement which was to create the middle-class fervour on which the growth of the oratorio tradition in England was founded should at first have opposed this particular work.” But I think that Handel, who was no stranger to the shifting allegiances of London’s audiences, would not have found it curious at all. It was just London.
In my program notes for our performance of Messiah last year, I examined how Handel began composing oratorios in order to restore his flagging fortunes in the wake of the collapse of his Royal Academy of Music, with its focus on Italian-style operas. It is certainly true that the advent of the oratorio, which didn’t require expensive stage sets and costumes, provided Handel with the money that he needed to support himself and pay for musicians to present concerts of his work.
But to think that the arrival of the oratorio was a panacea for all of Handel’s financial woes is to underestimate the fickleness of eighteenth-century London audiences. First, Handel couldn’t quite give up on Italian opera. He had some success with Atalanta in 1736, but the following operas--Faramondo, Alessandro Severo, and Serse--didn’t find a large audience. So yet again, Handel returned to major choral works, presenting a series of oratorios both old and new in the 1739-40 concert season, including Saul and Israel in Egypt. But Handel’s great success with oratorios in the first part of the 1730s was not to be repeated, and by the close of the decade, he seems to have decided to retire from the challenging musical life of London and its inconstant audiences.
Enter William Cavendish, the Duke of Devonshire, who served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1737 to 1745. One in a long line of senior English aristocrats who served as a viceroy on behalf of the throne, Cavendish invited Handel to give a series of oratorio concerts in Dublin in support of several local charities for the 1741-42 season. Somewhat surprising for us today (with Dublin as the center of Catholic Ireland), Dublin had been a Protestant-majority city since the 1640s; during Cromwell’s Protectorate, Catholics were actually banned from living within the Dublin city limits. Dublin’s Anglo-Irish identity was a major feature of the Protestant Ascendancy, which had begun in Tudor times with the confiscation of Irish Catholic estates and their consequent sale to English Protestant loyalists. It was also a comparatively large city: Dublin was the second largest city in the growing British Empire—though at 123,000 in 1733, compared to nearly 700,000 in London, it was a distant second. With a wealthy gentry to support the arts, the music scene was rich and thriving, and there were plenty of well-trained musicians for Handel to present concerts during his nearly ten months in the Irish capital.
The Irish invitation quite unexpectedly changed Handel’s fortunes. Rather than retiring to a German spa, the composer was now facing a potentially lucrative season away from London. He would take with him several choral works that had served him well, including Acis and Galatea, the Ode for St Cecilia’s Day, and L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. Wanting to add a new oratorio to these, Handel had a ready answer in a libretto that Charles Jennens had sent him in June 1741--Messiah. With a planned arrival in November, he would need to work fast, part of the reason that he finished his greatest composition in only 24 days in August and September. But Handel’s work was not completely done: he would also compose a large part of the oratorio Samson in September and October before setting sail.
In this sense, the chicken and egg are somewhat reversed. It can sometimes sound as if Handel went to Dublin to give Messiah an “out of town trial,” having grown nervous over the critical reception in London. But, though Handel was certainly eager to escape London and its audiences, the invitation to Dublin was what precipitated the composition of Messiah, not the other way around. And although the work’s premiere performance was famously well-received by the Dublin concertgoers, Messiah was only one of many works performed between Handel’s first concert there on December 23, 1741 (276 years ago tonight) and his departure in mid-August 1742. In between, nearly a dozen Handel works were performed, including the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate, L’Allegro, Acis and Galatea, Esther, Alexander’s Feast, Imeneo, and Saul. The season was what might today be called a “Handel Festival,” featuring all of the city’s finest musicians, including a choir of men and boys comprising singers from Dublin’s two cathedrals. The premiere performance of Messiah was given in the very middle of the season, as a charity concert for Mercer’s Hospital and a “charitable infirmary,” as well as for the relief of prisoners in several Dublin jails, on April 13, 1742. The rest, we all know, is history.
Though perhaps not quite. Handel’s fair-weather fans in London weren’t quite finished toying with him. The composer returned to London with renewed confidence and planned to give a series of oratorio concerts like the ones he had presented in Dublin. But he found himself in the crossfire of contemporary religious sentiment. The “chapel movement” that would ultimately lead to Wesleyan Methodism was underway, and the thought of presenting such a sacred subject as Jesus’ life in a theater was offensive to many of these pious believers. Messiah was performed in March 1743 in London, though there was vigorous public debate about its appropriateness for the concert hall. It wouldn’t be until the 1750s, when Handel performed Messiah for the benefit of the Foundling Hospital, that Messiah’s choral hegemony was launched.
Christopher Hogwood captures perfectly the exquisite irony in the early resistance of the low church Anglicans to Handel’s Messiah. He writes, “It is curious that the very movement which was to create the middle-class fervour on which the growth of the oratorio tradition in England was founded should at first have opposed this particular work.” But I think that Handel, who was no stranger to the shifting allegiances of London’s audiences, would not have found it curious at all. It was just London.
© Chrisopher Shepard, 2017
2016
Messiah and Georgian Capitalism
From global trade pacts to income inequality, bankruptcy to socialized medicine, a discussion of the relative merits of capitalism has been front and center in this year’s election cycle in a way that hasn’t been true for nearly a century. Talk about commercial “winners and losers” throughout this year put me in mind of Handel’s own financial ups and downs—a reminder that nothing is new under the sun. Georgian England was a time of great commercial expansion, and the musical world was not immune to the changes in fortune experienced in the larger economy. Unfettered capitalism could be found even in the arts; indeed, were it not for commercial competition, we probably never would have had the masterpiece Messiah in the first place.
Of all art forms, perhaps none other represents the “1%” better than opera. Just look at the Metropolitan Opera’s board of trustees, and you will find some of New York’s wealthiest people, a rare group that can afford to support one of the most lavish (and expensive) art forms. The same was true in Handel’s day. In fact, the art form had its roots in Italian nobility: the musical form emerged from courtly entertainment in the early seventeenth century in Florence and Venice. Wherever it spread, opera could not exist without the generous support of the nobility. By Handel’s time, the expanding upper middle class could afford tickets (though even there, Handel—unlike the producers of Hamilton—had to be careful about the price point), but it was the titled class that made opera possible.
In eighteenth century London, opera meant Italian opera. It was what made Handel a successful composer and producer; throughout the 1720s and into the next decade, he reigned supreme at the musical helm of the Royal Academy of Music. While there, Handel composed such masterpieces as Giulio Cesare and Rodelinda. Later, at the Second Academy, which produced its operas at the new Covent Garden, Handel presented several other operas, including Ariodante and Alcina. But factors both political and financial led to the collapse of Handel’s operatic fortunes. Politically, the famous intergenerational battles of the Hanoverian dynasty resulted in the creation of a new opera company by the crown prince Frederick, in opposition to his father George II. This company, the Opera of the Nobility, competed directly with Handel’s Second Academy of Music. No expense was spared: the upstart company engaged the services of some of the most famous singers in Europe, including Farinelli, the great Italian castrato. They poached some of Handel’s greatest singers in an ever-escalating talent race. The result was economically predictable—by the late 1730s, both companies had failed financially, unable to sustain their considerable costs. Under enormous pressure and a herculean workload, Handel suffered what is thought to have been a stroke, and though not completely bankrupt, he was in dire financial straits.
But another principle of economics ultimately saved him: diversification. Handel had inadvertently discovered the financial potential in presenting unstaged opera-like works in 1732, when he presented a concert performance of his earlier masque Esther in London. Handel’s star had risen considerably with the presentation five years earlier of his Coronation Anthems (which Masterwork will be performing later this season); such was the popularity of those works that excerpts were included in the concert production of Esther, which can be considered Handel’s first oratorio. Its great success—both artistic and financial—encouraged Handel to present the work in subsequent seasons, but paradoxically, this did not lead the composer to shift his focus towards writing oratorios. Athalia, Deborah and Alexander’s Feast followed in the next few years, but as appendages to the operatic season. Handel was still very much a composer of Italian opera.
This changed with the collapse of the London opera companies in 1737, accompanied by a greater desire on the part of the English audience to hear vocal works in their own language. Needing a steady source of income to replace the revenue stream formerly supplied by opera, Handel turned his sights to what had once been a supplemental activity—the composition of oratorios. His 1739 Saul is considered to be the first of his mature oratorios, untethered from either the operatic or masque tradition, using a large orchestra and featuring a significant number of choral movements. Ever resourceful and well-attuned to popular trends, Handel had hit upon a genre that not only restored his flagging fortunes, but also has left posterity with some of the greatest choral music ever written. Over the next decade, a new oratorio appeared virtually every year, sometimes more than one. Though not all were great successes, they nonetheless assured Handel’s financial security, and he died a rich man twenty years later. More important for us, a number of these works--Israel in Egypt, Samson, Judas Maccabeus and Solomon--have also assured Handel’s artistic legacy.
And what of the economics of Messiah, written in 1741? Imagine if today’s copyright laws applied to the work in perpetuity—the royalties would be staggering for this work that has never left the concert repertoire. But here we find another parallel to modern-day economics, this time a poignant and inspiring one. In 1749, Handel gave the first of what were to become annual charity performances at the Foundling Hospital, a new orphanage in London supported by the King. That first concert was so successful that he followed it the next year with a presentation of Messiah, which proved so popular that it then became the first annual Messiah performance in history. In an act of remarkable generosity, Handel left a fair copy of the score and performance parts to the Foundling Hospital so they could continue the annual concerts. This wonderful institution inherited Messiah’s lucrative performance rights and royalties, an act of philanthropy that matches the generosity of great donors like Andrew Carnegie.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose--the more things change, the more they stay the same. Capitalism was the same in the eighteenth century as it is in the twenty-first, a story of shifting fortunes, winners and losers, disappointments and turnarounds. In the arts, we begin to see the epochal shift from massively wealthy patrons who supported composers as their servants to a free market economy in which the fickle tastes of the ticket-buying public began to dictate the kinds of music that would be written. How surprising to think that, were it not so, you might not be sitting here tonight listening to Handel’s Messiah.
© Chris Shepard, 2016
Sources consulted:
Hogwood, Christopher. Handel. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984.
Taruskin, Richard. The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Arnold, Denis. The New Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Howell, Caro. “How Handel’s Messiah Helped London’s Orphans—and Vice Versa”. The Guardian, March 13, 2014.
Messiah and Georgian Capitalism
From global trade pacts to income inequality, bankruptcy to socialized medicine, a discussion of the relative merits of capitalism has been front and center in this year’s election cycle in a way that hasn’t been true for nearly a century. Talk about commercial “winners and losers” throughout this year put me in mind of Handel’s own financial ups and downs—a reminder that nothing is new under the sun. Georgian England was a time of great commercial expansion, and the musical world was not immune to the changes in fortune experienced in the larger economy. Unfettered capitalism could be found even in the arts; indeed, were it not for commercial competition, we probably never would have had the masterpiece Messiah in the first place.
Of all art forms, perhaps none other represents the “1%” better than opera. Just look at the Metropolitan Opera’s board of trustees, and you will find some of New York’s wealthiest people, a rare group that can afford to support one of the most lavish (and expensive) art forms. The same was true in Handel’s day. In fact, the art form had its roots in Italian nobility: the musical form emerged from courtly entertainment in the early seventeenth century in Florence and Venice. Wherever it spread, opera could not exist without the generous support of the nobility. By Handel’s time, the expanding upper middle class could afford tickets (though even there, Handel—unlike the producers of Hamilton—had to be careful about the price point), but it was the titled class that made opera possible.
In eighteenth century London, opera meant Italian opera. It was what made Handel a successful composer and producer; throughout the 1720s and into the next decade, he reigned supreme at the musical helm of the Royal Academy of Music. While there, Handel composed such masterpieces as Giulio Cesare and Rodelinda. Later, at the Second Academy, which produced its operas at the new Covent Garden, Handel presented several other operas, including Ariodante and Alcina. But factors both political and financial led to the collapse of Handel’s operatic fortunes. Politically, the famous intergenerational battles of the Hanoverian dynasty resulted in the creation of a new opera company by the crown prince Frederick, in opposition to his father George II. This company, the Opera of the Nobility, competed directly with Handel’s Second Academy of Music. No expense was spared: the upstart company engaged the services of some of the most famous singers in Europe, including Farinelli, the great Italian castrato. They poached some of Handel’s greatest singers in an ever-escalating talent race. The result was economically predictable—by the late 1730s, both companies had failed financially, unable to sustain their considerable costs. Under enormous pressure and a herculean workload, Handel suffered what is thought to have been a stroke, and though not completely bankrupt, he was in dire financial straits.
But another principle of economics ultimately saved him: diversification. Handel had inadvertently discovered the financial potential in presenting unstaged opera-like works in 1732, when he presented a concert performance of his earlier masque Esther in London. Handel’s star had risen considerably with the presentation five years earlier of his Coronation Anthems (which Masterwork will be performing later this season); such was the popularity of those works that excerpts were included in the concert production of Esther, which can be considered Handel’s first oratorio. Its great success—both artistic and financial—encouraged Handel to present the work in subsequent seasons, but paradoxically, this did not lead the composer to shift his focus towards writing oratorios. Athalia, Deborah and Alexander’s Feast followed in the next few years, but as appendages to the operatic season. Handel was still very much a composer of Italian opera.
This changed with the collapse of the London opera companies in 1737, accompanied by a greater desire on the part of the English audience to hear vocal works in their own language. Needing a steady source of income to replace the revenue stream formerly supplied by opera, Handel turned his sights to what had once been a supplemental activity—the composition of oratorios. His 1739 Saul is considered to be the first of his mature oratorios, untethered from either the operatic or masque tradition, using a large orchestra and featuring a significant number of choral movements. Ever resourceful and well-attuned to popular trends, Handel had hit upon a genre that not only restored his flagging fortunes, but also has left posterity with some of the greatest choral music ever written. Over the next decade, a new oratorio appeared virtually every year, sometimes more than one. Though not all were great successes, they nonetheless assured Handel’s financial security, and he died a rich man twenty years later. More important for us, a number of these works--Israel in Egypt, Samson, Judas Maccabeus and Solomon--have also assured Handel’s artistic legacy.
And what of the economics of Messiah, written in 1741? Imagine if today’s copyright laws applied to the work in perpetuity—the royalties would be staggering for this work that has never left the concert repertoire. But here we find another parallel to modern-day economics, this time a poignant and inspiring one. In 1749, Handel gave the first of what were to become annual charity performances at the Foundling Hospital, a new orphanage in London supported by the King. That first concert was so successful that he followed it the next year with a presentation of Messiah, which proved so popular that it then became the first annual Messiah performance in history. In an act of remarkable generosity, Handel left a fair copy of the score and performance parts to the Foundling Hospital so they could continue the annual concerts. This wonderful institution inherited Messiah’s lucrative performance rights and royalties, an act of philanthropy that matches the generosity of great donors like Andrew Carnegie.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose--the more things change, the more they stay the same. Capitalism was the same in the eighteenth century as it is in the twenty-first, a story of shifting fortunes, winners and losers, disappointments and turnarounds. In the arts, we begin to see the epochal shift from massively wealthy patrons who supported composers as their servants to a free market economy in which the fickle tastes of the ticket-buying public began to dictate the kinds of music that would be written. How surprising to think that, were it not so, you might not be sitting here tonight listening to Handel’s Messiah.
© Chris Shepard, 2016
Sources consulted:
Hogwood, Christopher. Handel. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984.
Taruskin, Richard. The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Arnold, Denis. The New Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Howell, Caro. “How Handel’s Messiah Helped London’s Orphans—and Vice Versa”. The Guardian, March 13, 2014.
2015
Handel the Theologian?
In recent years, there has been a great deal of research into the role of theology in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. It is easy to see why “Bach the Theologian” would become a musicological trope considering his more than two hundred church cantatas, as well as his Mass and Passion settings. In every job that Bach held, whether in a court or church setting, he composed sacred music. His capacious output serves as a lexicon for the theological meaning of countless musical figures, as well as an encyclopedia of the intersection of music and Lutheran theology.
But “Handel the Theologian?” Surely not! In the Handel/Bach dichotomy, we have come to see Bach as the parochial Saxon church musician and Handel as the cosmopolitan opera composer. After all, Handel left his native Halle at the age of 21 for Italy and then England; except for two years when he returned to Germany to work for the future George I of England, he spent the rest of his life in England. His music has become so indelibly associated with England (and, through Messiah, with the King James Bible), that it is easy to forget that Handel’s first two decades were steeped in the Lutheran church and the extremely rigorous education of the Lutheran Gymnasium in Halle—an education very similar to the one Bach received at the exact same time at St Michael’s School in Lüneburg, about 150 miles away.
Of course, Handel was an opera composer, and that dramatic sensibility infuses his oratorios as well, the vast majority of which recount Old Testament stories or tales from classical mythology. Handel employed many examples of the kind of musical word painting that was very common in opera, often using techniques that would have had an immediate association for his experienced listeners. We find many examples of this in Messiah. “Why do the nations so furiously rage?” is set in the stile concitato (“agitated style”), signifying unrest and bellicosity. In both “All we like sheep have gone astray” and “Their sound has gone out,” Handel uses meandering, long phrases to illustrate “astray” and “and their words unto the ends of the earth.” In “Since by man came death,” Handel uses his only example of a cappella singing in the work (a great rarity in his entire oeuvre) to exemplify death—and then brings back the full orchestra to signal resurrection.
But just as the libretto Charles Jennens set for Messiah transcends the kind of linear narrative that predominated in Handel’s oratorios, so too does Handel’s setting of this more thematic, quasi-theological text go beyond surface word painting. A number of musical choices that Handel made in composing Messiah—musical forms, keys, rhythmic patterns, meters, melodic figures—are rooted deep in the Lutheran theology that he learned through the education he received in Germany.
One example of this is the use of sharply dotted rhythms in depicting the crucifixion, a convention that was firmly established by the late Baroque. It is always useful to turn to Bach’s sacred works for clear examples of these aesthetic signifiers. Perhaps the best example of this dotted figure’s close association with the cross is found in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion; in the bass aria “Komm, süsses Kreuz,” the viola da gamba obbligato repeats the figure as a rhythmic ostinato. We find the same rhythmic pattern in the Passion movements at the core of Messiah--“He gave his back to the smiters,” “Surely He has borne our griefs,” and “All they that see Him, laugh Him to scorn.” On the surface level, this is a rhythm that has a tight, feverish energy appropriate to the drama and violence of the crucifixion. But the association goes deeper as well: seen on the page, the crossbeams on the sixteenth notes combined with the flags of the 32nd notes visually resemble a series of crosses.
Another musical association that would have been immediately understood by eighteenth-century Lutherans is the use of a strict fugue form to represent Old Testament law and prophecy. Again, we can see this in a direct way in Bach’s St. John Passion, in which Bach sets the text “we have a law, and according to that law he must die” to a fugue, the most rigidly regulated of all eighteenth-century musical genres. By this point in the Baroque period, the fugue was considered to be a slightly old-fashioned form, reinforcing the juxtaposition of Old Testament law within the New Testament story. The only two examples of a strict fugue in Messiah are found in the choruses “And with His stripes” and “He trusted in God.” By using this rule-bound form, Handel may very well have been making the theological point that the Passion story itself was preordained and based in ancient law and prophecy.
Indeed, the idea of the New Testament as the fulfillment of the Old Testament is fundamental to Christian theology, and it is imbedded deeply in Jennens’ choice of scriptures for Messiah’s libretto. So it is not surprising that Handel would choose a number of unifying elements to represent large themes in the work. Take, for example, the choice of the opening orchestral movement. It is written in the form of a French overture, with a slow opening (often with dotted rhythms), followed by a fugue. This musical form was often used by composers to illustrate the heralding of the king, since the French overture was so closely associated with the French court of Louis XIV. In this way, the orchestral overture refers to the prophecy of the coming king, tinged with a suggestion of pain and the Passion, which Baroque composers often depicted through the use of an E-minor tonality. The beginning of Part II, “Behold the Lamb of God,” similarly suggests a French overture, though in this case shorn of a fugue. It too heralds the coming of a king—but a king who comes in humility. The true statement of kingship appears at the very end of the work, a musical fulfillment of the prophecy. The beginning of “Worthy is the Lamb” has the gravity and weight of a French overture (though without dotted rhythms), this time in the “kingly” key of D major, with trumpets heralding the king’s arrival.
Just as the French overture was associated with kingship, the 12/8 rocking siciliano dance form, characterized by a lyrical melody with dotted rhythm, often represented pastoral themes in Baroque music (see the Sinfonia from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, for example). It is obvious why Handel uses this form in the Christmas portion of Messiah, for the orchestral Pifa and the duet “He Shall Feed His Flock” —after all, the story takes place in the shepherds’ field. But Handel uses this form at least twice more in the work. In the midst of the story of the post-Resurrection evangelism, Handel sets “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace” as a siciliano. Then he uses it a final time for the soprano solo, “If God be for us, who can be against us.” In setting the text in this way, Handel knits together the larger work by depicting the Messiah as a protective shepherd—first literally, then metaphorically.
To go through all of the ways in which Handel uses musico-theological figures in Messiah would require far more than a set of cursory program notes. But even by presenting these few examples, I hope to encourage listeners to hunt for similar moments of word painting and “theology painting” in this extraordinary work. Just as The DaVinci Code opened many readers’ eyes to the possibility of hidden meanings and symbols in Renaissance painting, so too can we experience the thrill of discovering the myriad associations in Baroque music, forgotten for two centuries, but that are now reemerging through painstaking scholarship. Such “hunting” can take a piece as familiar and beloved as Messiah and infuse it with fresh levels of significance for the listener.
© Chris Shepard, 2015
Sources Consulted:
Bartels, Dietrich. Musica Poetica: Musical-Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
Chafe, Eric. Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach. Oakland: University of California Press, 1991.
Hogwood, Christopher. Handel. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984.
Mann, Alfred. Bach and Handel: Choral Performance Practice. Chapel Hill: Hinshaw Music, 1992.
Pelikan, Jaroslav. Bach Among the Theologians. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1986.
Smither, Howard E. A History of the Oratorio, Volume 4. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
Handel the Theologian?
In recent years, there has been a great deal of research into the role of theology in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. It is easy to see why “Bach the Theologian” would become a musicological trope considering his more than two hundred church cantatas, as well as his Mass and Passion settings. In every job that Bach held, whether in a court or church setting, he composed sacred music. His capacious output serves as a lexicon for the theological meaning of countless musical figures, as well as an encyclopedia of the intersection of music and Lutheran theology.
But “Handel the Theologian?” Surely not! In the Handel/Bach dichotomy, we have come to see Bach as the parochial Saxon church musician and Handel as the cosmopolitan opera composer. After all, Handel left his native Halle at the age of 21 for Italy and then England; except for two years when he returned to Germany to work for the future George I of England, he spent the rest of his life in England. His music has become so indelibly associated with England (and, through Messiah, with the King James Bible), that it is easy to forget that Handel’s first two decades were steeped in the Lutheran church and the extremely rigorous education of the Lutheran Gymnasium in Halle—an education very similar to the one Bach received at the exact same time at St Michael’s School in Lüneburg, about 150 miles away.
Of course, Handel was an opera composer, and that dramatic sensibility infuses his oratorios as well, the vast majority of which recount Old Testament stories or tales from classical mythology. Handel employed many examples of the kind of musical word painting that was very common in opera, often using techniques that would have had an immediate association for his experienced listeners. We find many examples of this in Messiah. “Why do the nations so furiously rage?” is set in the stile concitato (“agitated style”), signifying unrest and bellicosity. In both “All we like sheep have gone astray” and “Their sound has gone out,” Handel uses meandering, long phrases to illustrate “astray” and “and their words unto the ends of the earth.” In “Since by man came death,” Handel uses his only example of a cappella singing in the work (a great rarity in his entire oeuvre) to exemplify death—and then brings back the full orchestra to signal resurrection.
But just as the libretto Charles Jennens set for Messiah transcends the kind of linear narrative that predominated in Handel’s oratorios, so too does Handel’s setting of this more thematic, quasi-theological text go beyond surface word painting. A number of musical choices that Handel made in composing Messiah—musical forms, keys, rhythmic patterns, meters, melodic figures—are rooted deep in the Lutheran theology that he learned through the education he received in Germany.
One example of this is the use of sharply dotted rhythms in depicting the crucifixion, a convention that was firmly established by the late Baroque. It is always useful to turn to Bach’s sacred works for clear examples of these aesthetic signifiers. Perhaps the best example of this dotted figure’s close association with the cross is found in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion; in the bass aria “Komm, süsses Kreuz,” the viola da gamba obbligato repeats the figure as a rhythmic ostinato. We find the same rhythmic pattern in the Passion movements at the core of Messiah--“He gave his back to the smiters,” “Surely He has borne our griefs,” and “All they that see Him, laugh Him to scorn.” On the surface level, this is a rhythm that has a tight, feverish energy appropriate to the drama and violence of the crucifixion. But the association goes deeper as well: seen on the page, the crossbeams on the sixteenth notes combined with the flags of the 32nd notes visually resemble a series of crosses.
Another musical association that would have been immediately understood by eighteenth-century Lutherans is the use of a strict fugue form to represent Old Testament law and prophecy. Again, we can see this in a direct way in Bach’s St. John Passion, in which Bach sets the text “we have a law, and according to that law he must die” to a fugue, the most rigidly regulated of all eighteenth-century musical genres. By this point in the Baroque period, the fugue was considered to be a slightly old-fashioned form, reinforcing the juxtaposition of Old Testament law within the New Testament story. The only two examples of a strict fugue in Messiah are found in the choruses “And with His stripes” and “He trusted in God.” By using this rule-bound form, Handel may very well have been making the theological point that the Passion story itself was preordained and based in ancient law and prophecy.
Indeed, the idea of the New Testament as the fulfillment of the Old Testament is fundamental to Christian theology, and it is imbedded deeply in Jennens’ choice of scriptures for Messiah’s libretto. So it is not surprising that Handel would choose a number of unifying elements to represent large themes in the work. Take, for example, the choice of the opening orchestral movement. It is written in the form of a French overture, with a slow opening (often with dotted rhythms), followed by a fugue. This musical form was often used by composers to illustrate the heralding of the king, since the French overture was so closely associated with the French court of Louis XIV. In this way, the orchestral overture refers to the prophecy of the coming king, tinged with a suggestion of pain and the Passion, which Baroque composers often depicted through the use of an E-minor tonality. The beginning of Part II, “Behold the Lamb of God,” similarly suggests a French overture, though in this case shorn of a fugue. It too heralds the coming of a king—but a king who comes in humility. The true statement of kingship appears at the very end of the work, a musical fulfillment of the prophecy. The beginning of “Worthy is the Lamb” has the gravity and weight of a French overture (though without dotted rhythms), this time in the “kingly” key of D major, with trumpets heralding the king’s arrival.
Just as the French overture was associated with kingship, the 12/8 rocking siciliano dance form, characterized by a lyrical melody with dotted rhythm, often represented pastoral themes in Baroque music (see the Sinfonia from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, for example). It is obvious why Handel uses this form in the Christmas portion of Messiah, for the orchestral Pifa and the duet “He Shall Feed His Flock” —after all, the story takes place in the shepherds’ field. But Handel uses this form at least twice more in the work. In the midst of the story of the post-Resurrection evangelism, Handel sets “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace” as a siciliano. Then he uses it a final time for the soprano solo, “If God be for us, who can be against us.” In setting the text in this way, Handel knits together the larger work by depicting the Messiah as a protective shepherd—first literally, then metaphorically.
To go through all of the ways in which Handel uses musico-theological figures in Messiah would require far more than a set of cursory program notes. But even by presenting these few examples, I hope to encourage listeners to hunt for similar moments of word painting and “theology painting” in this extraordinary work. Just as The DaVinci Code opened many readers’ eyes to the possibility of hidden meanings and symbols in Renaissance painting, so too can we experience the thrill of discovering the myriad associations in Baroque music, forgotten for two centuries, but that are now reemerging through painstaking scholarship. Such “hunting” can take a piece as familiar and beloved as Messiah and infuse it with fresh levels of significance for the listener.
© Chris Shepard, 2015
Sources Consulted:
Bartels, Dietrich. Musica Poetica: Musical-Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
Chafe, Eric. Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach. Oakland: University of California Press, 1991.
Hogwood, Christopher. Handel. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984.
Mann, Alfred. Bach and Handel: Choral Performance Practice. Chapel Hill: Hinshaw Music, 1992.
Pelikan, Jaroslav. Bach Among the Theologians. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1986.
Smither, Howard E. A History of the Oratorio, Volume 4. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.