Wintertime is Messiahtime

December 6, 12:37 PMSF Classical Music ExaminerScott Foglesong

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His Nibs, George F. H.

Here we are securely into December, thus Messiah season is upon us. Handel's beloved sacred-oratorio-cum-entertainment-spectacular receives its yearly workouts, hither and yon, from ensembles exalted and humble, in venues large and small.

Messiah as winter solstice fare seems a bit odd; originally it was considered a vernal equinox piece. But winter/spring dichotomy isn't particularly uncommon; one school of thought in early Christianity celebrated the founder's birth in the spring, and to this day many Buddhist traditions are split as to the time of the Buddha's enlightenment and/or birth, placing it either winter or spring-ish.

Therefore, although it was originally a fixture of the spring season, nowadays we've winterized it.

Another slight incongruity concerning Messiah is its actual intended purpose. Originally Handel thought of it more as an 'entertainment' (as it was called) — i.e., yet another of his Biblically-themed but not necessarily sacred oratorios. The English had become quite keen on oratorios, having turned their backs on Italian opera for the most part, with Handel ever ready to supply his public with the music it wanted.

Messiah was a bit different from Handel's typical text in that it took its material from both the Greek and Hebrew sections of the Judaeo-Christian traditional writings, while previously Handel had tended to draw from the Hebrew parts only. Whereas the English weren't likely to see anything but validation in stories concerning the ancient Israelites, when it came to those passages spouted forth in Anglican churches throughout the country, folks became a bit cautious. After all, Passion music was resolutely sacred in nature, but Messiah wasn't exactly a Passion, nor was it exactly sacred.

That discomfort is exemplied in Dean Swift's request that it be subtitled "A Sacred Oratorio" prior to the Dublin 1742 première, and that the proceeds be given to charity. Folks were distinctly queasy about the theological correctness of using such material for oratorio, even more so considering that the singers were drawn directly from the opera houses and popular theaters.

Horace Walpole took a decidedly sniffy tone; in a letter of 1743 he gripes that "Handel has set up an Oratorio against the Operas, and succeeds. He has hired all the goddesses from the farces and the singers of Roast Beef from between the acts at both theaters, with a man with one note in his voice and a girl without ever an one; and so they sing, and make brave hallelujahs; and the good company encore the recitative, if it happens to have a cadence like what they call a tune."

Handel did not allay anyone's fears when for the revival of 1750 he added a spectacular display aria for the castrato Gaetano Guadagni.

Nevertheless, Messiah became a fixture of Victorian piety, acquiring the musty patina of sanctimoniousness and swelling into massive corpulence with ever-expanding performance forces and thickly smooth instrumental revisions. In our time it has gone through a craze for sing-it-yourself affairs, now more or less defunct, with a chorus of however many may squeeze into a concert hall.

Typically of today's tastes, Handel's original orchestration is strongly favored over Mozart's continuo-free, wind-enhanced rescoring (although the Mozart version has a great deal to recommend it), and smaller, grittier performing forces are the norm.

Without a doubt Messiah is a child of fashion, recasting itself in whatever image seems appropriate to a particular age. That's right and proper; musical culture is a living thing, not something pickled in formalin and kept in a jar away from light. Handel's oratorio is the oldest composition to have remained without a break in the active repertory, and thus it is the Grand Old Man of the Western musical tradition.

Handel wrote the thing at Indy-500 speed: 24 days from start to finish. One may be allowed to wonder how in tarnation anybody could write such a large work (not to mention such a good one) with such rapidity.

The answer is really quite simple: it can't be done without liberal borrowing from other sources. Messiah contains plenty of borrowed materials, mostly from Handel's earlier works, but it is not free of the taint of Handel's appropriations of other composers' work. (The word plagiarism is absolutely correct in this case, no matter how careful the scholarly attempts at circumvention.)

One of my favorite moments concerns the chorus "For unto us a child is born." How many people have noticed how poor the fit between the music and the words? Probably not as many as might were Messiah a recently-unearthed work instead of being a cultural icon.

Just say the phrase "for unto us a child is born." You can emphasize most of the words without sounding silly: "for UNTO us a child is born", "for unto US a child is born", "for unto us a CHILD is born", or "for unto us a child is BORN."

However, "FOR unto us a child is born" is a mangling of ordinary English rhythm, but that's the way it comes out in Handel's setting.

Now, Handel was not incapable of setting English rhythm. No doubt he recognized the disconnect between text and meter, but he let it go.

The melody of "For unto us a child is born" originally set the chamber duet No, di voi non vo'fidarmi, in a cantata dating from Handel's years in Italy. As a setting of the word "No", the strong emphasized downbeat of the melody is perfect, but transferred to "FOR unto us..." it doesn't work.

Handel probably figured that people either 1) wouldn't notice, or if they did, 2) wouldn't care.

Apparently he was right about that, as he was right about his many other musical larcenies; the scholars natter about them, his own librettist Charles Jennens (pictured right) was absolutely aghast about them (but he was a bitchy guy on the whole), but the public at large doesn't really care.

We all love Israel in Egypt, even if eleven of the oratorio's twenty-eight choruses are by other composers such as Stradella, Muffat and Krell. And to date I've never seen anyone stomping to the exit at a Messiah performance snarling about the lousy prosody in "For unto us a child is born."

If you'd like to acquire a recording of Messiah, well, you certainly have abundant choice. ArkivMusic lists 91, to be precise, and those are just the ones that are currently in print, remember, and available in the United States.

Recordings range from those everything-but-the-kitchen-sink affairs with performing forces large enough to consider forming a government and adopting a constitution, to scrupulously-clean scholarly versions that strain every nerve to avoid the slightest stylistic and/or historical transgression. Needless to say, most recording performances shy away from these extremes.

• If you want to hear all of the various alternate arias that Handel tucked into Messiah during his lifetime, the McGegan/Philharmonia Baroque album is your best bet, and it's a dandy performance to boot.
   
• Big, opulent, and well-padded: you can't beat that great iconic Ormandy/Philadelphia with Eileen Farrell and the Mormon Tabernacle.
   
• A solid performance-practice recording of the 1754 version comes from Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort.
   
• Also H.I.P, but extremely lively and more overtly theatrical is René Jacobs with the Freiberg Baroque Orchestra (one of my personal favorites.)
   
• Andrew Parrott and the Handel & Haydn Society give us a fine rendition of the Mozart version; here's the iTunes link.
   

For live performances, we've got the marvelous American Bach Soloists gracing us with the work, on December 18 and 19 at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral.