Handel’s Messiah

Messiah, HWV 56
George Frideric Handel

Text compiled by Charles Jennens

Born: February 23, 1685, Halle, Germany
Died: April 14, 1759, London, England
Composed: August 22–September 14, 1741, London
Premiered: April 13, 1742, Great Music Hall, Fishamble Street, Dublin; Handel directing
Length: 2 hours

Few works have become as inseparable from public tradition as Handel’s Messiah, yet the oratorio was not originally conceived as music for Christmas. Its three-part design embraces a much larger arc: prophecy and the Nativity, Christ’s suffering and resurrection, and the believer’s hope of redemption and eternal life. Nor does it tell this story through named characters or staged action. Instead, Charles Jennens assembled passages from the Bible and the Psalms, creating a sequence of reflections in which prophecy, narration, meditation, and communal response continually illuminate one another.

Handel received Jennens’s text in 1741 and composed the complete score between August 22 and September 14, only twenty-four days! That astonishing speed was not entirely unusual for Handel, as an experienced composer of Italian opera who could work with remarkable fluency. Even so, the manuscript conveys tremendous concentration as he adapts his theatrical instincts to sacred contemplation. Recitative advances the text, arias pause to consider its meaning, and choruses expand individual experience into something public and universal.

Messiah received its premiere on April 13, 1742, at the Great Music Hall on Dublin’s Fishamble Street. The performance benefited three charities concerned with medical care and debtors’ relief. Interest was so great that gentlemen were asked to leave their swords at home and women to attend without the wide hoops worn beneath their skirts, allowing space for more people into the hall. The Dublin reception was enthusiastic, though early London performances encountered objections to presenting scriptural texts in a theater. Beginning in 1750, Handel’s annual performances for London’s Foundling Hospital helped establish the work’s enduring place in public life.

The music’s immediacy rests partly in Handel’s gift for making words audible through gesture. In “Every valley,” the vocal line rises on “exalted,” sinks on “low,” twists around “crooked,” and steadies on “straight.” The chorus “All we like sheep” wanders through playful, overlapping lines before coming together with sobering force at the words “the iniquity of us all.” Throughout the work, Handel moves effortlessly between intimacy and spectacle: the quiet pastoral colors of the Nativity, the desolation of “He was despised,” the gathering energy of “Hallelujah,” and the brilliant trumpet dialogue of “The trumpet shall sound.”

Handel revised Messiah for later performances, adapting arias to particular singers. Consequently, no single version represents every performance he directed. What remains constant is the eloquence of its design. When the final chorus, “Worthy is the Lamb,” gives way to the immense concluding “Amen,” one word expands into an entire architecture of affirmation. Nearly three centuries after the Dublin premiere, Messiah still joins storytelling, reflection, and collective celebration with extraordinary directness.

About The South Bend Chamber Singers

The South Bend Chamber Singers, an ensemble-in-residence at Saint Mary’s College under the direction of Nancy Menk, is in its 28th season. Over the past 20-plus years the Singers have presented major choral-orchestral works such as Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Magnificat, B Minor Mass, and St. John Passion; Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Vivaldi’s Gloria, Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass, Brahms’ Requiem and Orff’s Carmina Burana. Yet, the ensemble concentrates primarily on works by living composers and regularly commissions new works and unusual and complex arrangements.

The Singers have commissioned new choral works from composers Stephen Paulus, Jan Bach, William Hawley, Steven Sametz, Libby Larsen, Gregg Smith, Carey Boyce, Frank Ferko, Dan Locklair, Carol Barnett, Paul Carey, Zae Munn, Robert Harris, J. David Moore, and many others, most of which have been published and continue to be performed by choirs throughout the world. Other concerts have featured music from the United States, Canada, South America, Europe, Africa, India, Korea, and even Mongolia.

The choir has joined with numerous other chamber and instrumental ensembles including the South Bend Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, and Germany’s Chamber Orchestra of the Rhine; the Chester, Cavani, and Avalon String Quartets; the Northern Illinois University Steel Band, and South Bend’s own Kennedy’s Kitchen.

The Chamber Singers were selected to perform for the Central Division Convention of the American Choral Directors Association in 1996 (Cincinnati) and 2002 (Chicago). In 2000, the Singers were one of five finalists for the prestigious Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence, given annually by Chorus America, and they won the ASCAP/Chorus America Award for Adventurous Programming in 2004. In March 2012 they performed for the American Choral Directors Association Central Division Conference in Fort Wayne. They were semi-finalists for The American Prize in Choral Performance in 2012 and 2013. From 1992 to 2009 they were awarded annual grants from the Indiana Arts Commission.

Can’t make it to a Mosaic concert in person? Tune in to 88.9 WSND-FM for the rebroadcast of Handel’s Messiah. Listen on Sunday, March 21 at 2:00 p.m., and experience the music from wherever you are!

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