Notes 58 THE FLORIDA ORCHESTRA | 2017-2018 Program GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL
MESSIAH, AN ORATORIO IN THREE PARTS
DURATION: ca. 120 minutes
Overview
It was Gay and Pepusch’s satirical romp of 1729, The Beggar’s
Opera, that first soured the fashionable London taste for
what Samuel Johnson described in his 1755 Dictionary of the
English Language as “an exotic and irrational entertainment”
— Italian opera. As both composer and impresario, Handel
was London’s most important producer of opera, and he
toiled doggedly for the entire decade of the 1730s to keep
his theatrical ventures solvent, but the tide of fashion (and
the virulent cabals of his competitors) brought him to
the edge of bankruptcy by 1739. As early as 1732, with the
oratorio Esther, he had begun to cast about for a musical
genre that would appeal to the changing fancy of the English
public. Neither that work nor the oratorio Alexander’s Feast
of 1736 had the success he had hoped, however, and the
strain of his situation resulted in the collapse of his health in
1737, reported variously as a stroke or as acute rheumatism
and depression. Much to the surprise and chagrin of his
enemies, he recovered and resumed work. The oratorios
Israel in Egypt and Saul appeared in 1739, but created
little public stir. Determined to have one last try at saving
Italian opera in London, Handel spent the summer of 1740
arranging production details and searching for singers on the
Continent for his upcoming winter season. After returning to
England in early autumn, he completed what proved to be
his last two operas, both of which failed ignominiously on
the stage: Imeneo, premiered on November 22nd, closed
after only two performances; Deidamia (January 10, 1741)
after three. Handel’s publisher, Walsh, despite having good
success selling the recent Op. 6 Concerti Grossi, could not
find enough subscribers to warrant printing the score of
Deidamia. In February, Handel largely withdrew from public
life and seldom left his house in Brook Street, near Grosvenor
Square. His rivals rejoiced.
Rumors began to circulate that Handel was finished in
London. Some held that his health had given way for good;
others, that he had died. The story given greatest credence,
one fueled by Handel’s composition of some Italian duets
— pieces nearly useless in London — was that he planned
to return to the Continent. However, in the summer he
suddenly sprang back to creative life, inspired by a small
book of Biblical texts that had been compiled by Charles
Jennens, a moneyed fop of artistic pretensions but a sincere
admirer of the composer who had earlier supplied the words
for the oratorio L’Allegro, il Penseroso e il Moderato, based
on Milton’s poem. Handel’s imagination was fired, and he
began composing on August 22nd. The stories have it that
he shut himself in his room, eschewing sleep and leaving
food untouched, while he frantically penned his new work.
Twenty-four days later, on September 14th, he emerged with
the completed score of Messiah. “I did think I did see Heaven
before me and the great God Himself!” he muttered to a
servant.
It was long thought that Handel, a devout Christian and Bible
scholar, composed Messiah out of sheer religious fervor, with
no thought of an immediate performance. In his book on
the composer, however, the distinguished scholar of 18thcentury
music H.C. Robbins Landon contended that the work
was written at the request of William, Duke of Devonshire,
the Lord Lieutenant of Dublin, who visited London early in
1741. William, who knew Handel largely through his sacred
vocal music, apparently asked him to provide a new work
for performance at a series of concerts in Dublin that would
aid various local charities. Handel’s newly regained creative
enthusiasm stirred by William’s request continued to
percolate, and he began Samson immediately upon finishing
Messiah, completing all but two numbers of that score within
six weeks.
Handel was undoubtedly glad to leave London and its bitter
disappointments in November 1741 for the journey to Dublin
to produce his new oratorio; he arrived in the Irish capital on
November 18th, being “universally known by his excellent
Compositions in all Kinds of Musick,” trumpeted the city’s
press. It was the beginning of one of the happiest periods of
the composer’s life, when, as he wrote to Jennens, he passed
his time during the ensuing nine months “with Honour, profit
and pleasure.”
Preparations for the presentation of Handel’s grand new
oratorio went on throughout the winter of 1742. Choristers
were assembled from Dublin’s cathedrals, the best available
soloists and instrumentalists were enlisted, and the date
of the premiere was set for April 13th. The public rehearsal
on April 9th roused excitement to such a pitch that the
following announcement had to be placed in Faulkner’s
“Dublin Journal” concerning the official first performance:
“The Stewards of the Charitable Musical Society request
the Favour of the Ladies not to come with Hoops i.e., hoop
skirts this Day to the Musick-Hall. The Gentlemen are desired
to come without their Swords, as it will greatly encrease the