Friday, December 9 and Saturday, December 10, 2011 at 8:00 pm
Wortham Center, Cullen Theater

If you attended Mercury Baroque’s recent presentation of the opera Rodelinda and read the program notes (thank you!), you may recall that, in 1741, Handel was at a crossroads.

In the years since the premiere of Rodelinda in 1725, the opera seria (literally translated, “serious opera”) form had fallen out of fashion after having taken Europe and the British Isles by storm in the early part of the 18th century.  Ever the commercial artist, Handel began moving away from opera and toward oratorios during the 1830s.  Saul was well received in 1738, followed in the next year by the epic Israel in Egypt.

This transition from one musical form to another was not monumental in its scope.  In point of fact, operas and oratorios are not all that different, practically speaking.  The primary line of demarcation lies in the fact that oratorios, unlike operas, do not revolve around a plot and the movement of characters through the story line.  While, in some oratorios, individual soloists do represent characters, these characters do not generally interact with one another.  Having said that, operas and oratorios do have a number of characteristics in common, among them the use of soloists, choruses, and orchestral forces. 

Typically, oratorios deal with religious topics and themes, and Messiah is certainly no exception.  For the libretto, Handel’s collaborator Charles Jennens cobbled together a text from verses taken from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, tracing the life of Jesus Christ from prophecy to birth to crucifixion.  The work received its premiere in Dublin in 1742, the result of an invitation for Handel to perform a subscription series of programs, a run of concerts which was to include a new oratorio.  Apocryphal stories have claimed that he composed Messiah in a blaze of divine inspiration, but the fact is that Handel was known for his ability to write a great deal of material in a short amount of time.  His next oratorio, Samson, which was begun just a week after Messiah’s completion, was produced in a matter of just a few weeks.

A canny businessman, Handel stoked the publicity fires with a few well-timed public rehearsals, performances which gave rise to a series of newspaper articles proclaiming Messiah a masterpiece before its official premiere.  The Dublin News-Letter reported, “In the opinion of the best judges, (Messiah) far surpasses anything of that nature which has been performed in this or any other kingdom.”  The Dublin Journal went even further, declaring Handel’s new work  “the finest Composition of Musick that was ever heard.”  By the time opening night arrived, the citizens of Dublin were clamoring for seats, to the point where concert organizers – attempting to cram as many bodies as possible into the available space - politely requested that ladies attending the performance “not to come with hoops” and noting that gentlemen “are desired to come without their swords.”

Messiah debuted in London the following year.  It was during this engagement that, according to legend, King George rose from his seat during the Hallelujah Chorus (whether due to excitement or a need to stretch his legs we will never know….), obligating the rest of the audience to stand up, thereby creating a tradition which extends to the present day.  Handel was lauded for his new work, and in subsequent years – even decades - the demand for oratorios and the like only continued to increase.  George Bernard Shaw eventually remarked, only slightly in jest, that “the British public takes a creepy kind of pleasure in requiems.”

While Messiah has remained firmly entrenched in the classical repertoire for over 250 years, it is significant to note that the performance practices associated with the work have changed markedly over time.  In the decades following Handel’s death, the size of the Messiah orchestra grew rapidly.  A London performance in 1787 was advertised with the (probably exaggerated) promise that “the band will consist of eight hundred performers.”  Additionally, the piece was often re-orchestrated to fit the musical fashion of the day.  An arrangement by Mozart even went so far as to remove the organ continuo from the score.  As the decades went by, and Messiah drifted further away from Handel’s original conception, some tried to rationalize these extreme modifications by arguing that, if Handel had access to modern instruments and larger forces, he would have embraced these “improvements.”

The tide began to turn early in the twentieth century, when suggestions were made in musicological circles that perhaps performers should strive to present Messiah in a manner closer to that envisioned by Handel.  A significant step in this direction was provided by Adrian Boult, who led a BBC broadcast of Messiah in 1934 featuring an orchestration which was said at the time to exhibit a “faithful adherence” to Handel’s original scoring.  A new, more historically accurate edition of the score was published in 1965, and this development, along with the rise of the original instrument movement, brought performance practices back (more or less) full circle.  Mercury Baroque will perform the original Dublin version of the score, giving audiences the opportunity to hear Messiah much as did the concertgoers of Handel’s day.  But they still ask that you leave your hoops and swords at home…

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