Ideas - Revealing facts about the Christmas song meant for Easter

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

Handel’s Messiah is one of the best-loved pieces of Christmas music. Only it was meant for Easter. But it draws on far more from the Old Testament than the New. There are more surprising facts about this 18th-century masterpiece that IDEAS explores with Ivars Taurins, founding director of the Tafelmusik Chamber Choir who has conducted Messiah over 200 times, and veteran CBC Radio broadcaster Robert Harris. In nine movements, they reveal the hidden treasures of Handel’s celebrated work. *This episode originally aired in 2015.

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shouldn't be ultra-extra basic. A message from QP8125. This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyand. In 2010, shoppers at a food court in Welland, Ontario, were taking a lunch break during their pre-Christmas. shopping. Then, out of nowhere, a young woman stood up at her table with her cell phone to her ear

and started singing this. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Of course, hallelujah. Of course, this singers are performing what may be the most famous piece of classical music of all time. The Hallelujah Chorus by George Friedrich Handel. The Hallelujah chorus is the high point of Handel's 1741 Oratorio, and his Messiah is now a musical staple all over the world. Yet it was never actually meant to be performed at Christmas, and it doesn't even feature very much from the New Testament.

It turns out that Handel's Messiah, as popular as it is, is full of mysteries and secrets. One person who can help us unlock its hidden treasures is Ivar's Taurans. Ivars directs the Tafel Music Chamber choir, in Toronto and has pondered Messiah's secrets his entire professional life. The kingdom of our Lord and of Christ, and of His Christ. Today, Evars joins Ideas contributor Robert Harris to share their thoughts about its creation, appeal, and power. This is Messiah revealed in nine movements. Movement one, the big hit.

So here we are, Evars, right in the middle of the greatest piece of music, maybe ever composed, the hallelujah chorus. Here we go. King of kings, forever and ever, hallelujah, and Lord of Lords. And now the sopranos start their clans. Now ever And just go I have And Lord of Lords

And they hold it And they hold it into their blue And a minor king. And a minor king. And Lord of laws King of kings And none of lords And then it still unfolds.

It's amazing. It's so simple. It's so simple. It's just going up and up. But there's that minor chord that gives just a hint of darkness in here. So there's secrets in here. There's secrets in this. People think they know this piece so well. But hidden in it to handle us all these secrets. It's sort of the theme of our whole hour is that the Messiah that people love and have listened to for centuries, literally, it isn't exactly what it seems to be. It's something more interesting. There's always something to find. So we've all listened to the Hallelujah Chorus, if we've watched television commercials or been to sing-alongs, and some of us have attempted to sing it. Not many of us have attempted to conduct it. The sense I get for the Hallelujah Chorus is a conductor's just wind up this thing and then they let it go. Well, it comes to the point where you've built the piece up and it gets to this climax, but it itself is a little miniature beautifully. structured piece that if you give away its secrets too soon, you know, you have to be really aware of the dramatic pacing. And so when I started, I have to not only gauge what the tempo was

from the piece before, but know where this is, how this is going to sit in terms of what's going to come for part three, and I know that my Redeemer liveth. So pacing and not giving away stuff too soon, because finally when you get to where we arrived, and Lord of Lords, it's only the first step because then he starts going through and he shall reign and he shall reign and then he starts again with the and we're still not done you know and by the end it's this whirlwind of exhortation of hallelujah forever and ever and ever and ever and it just it can spin out of control you have a quote well it's an amazing it's an amazing quote and it's from a letter describing a Christmas performance from a piece written in New York in 1900

called Aunt Deborah hears the Messiah. And it's in Aunt Deborah's words, and I'll try and do the accent as it's written here. By and by, Jesus has come out of the grave, and all heaven is rejoiced and over his victory. They called that part the hallelujah chorus, and we were going up a broad gold staircase, for they sang over and over, king of kings and Lord of Lords, and each time on a higher note, higher and higher still, so my poor soul could hardly bear to stay into this old body, and I held on to the back of the seat ahead of me to keep from rising up into the air.

to something there, but you know, we are talking about Messiah, arguably the most famous piece of classical music ever written, you know, it's 1741, 42, it's 270 years old. You've conducted this, do you know how many times you've conducted this piece? It's 200 now. It's somewhere on the border of 200. It's now, I think, going to be over at. So what is it? Why this piece, how is it possible that one piece of music has withstood the testament? What are the secrets in the Messiah that make it not just so relevant in 1741, relevant at the end of the 19th century. You know, packs houses throughout North America. There's 14 performances of sold out Messiah in Toronto every year.

Yeah. Why? Well, there's, I think there are a number of factors. The first of all, and that's the plainest to see, it's great music. You know, it's filled with lyrical melodies, memorable melodies. I equate them to the best of the songs that Frank Sinatra, used to sing or the Broadway musical tunes that everyone could whistle, they catch the ear immediately. I mean, I know that My Redeemer Liveth became so famous that the middle section

da-da-da-di became one of the little motifs of Big Ben. But when we get beyond the music side of it, I mean, this is quote-unquote the greatest story every toll. This is the story of Jesus. So quite a part of the part. from the music, how does Messiah, which tells a very deeply religious story, managed to succeed in a basically secular age? Well, I think people, of course, are affected by the text. They are inspired by the text, the idea of goodwill towards men, peace on earth, charity, all the good things that humanity should be doing. But when the Victorians transferred the Messiah from Lent to Christmas. So this was originally written for Easter. Exactly. As a kind of contemplative

piece, the Victorians transferred it to Christmas. And you realize that a Christmas carol by Dickens has the same sort of motives of charity and goodwill. And so it became one of our rituals, I think. It's a mishmash of secular and sacred. It just gives us a good feeling. You know, but it interests me because when you first listen to it, you hear this piece that is all of the things you say open and generous, and then you realize that it's telling exactly the story you want to hear, that in the end we all will be saved, we all will be transformed,

there's nothing to worry about, oh, Comfrey-E. That's not that realistic a story, you know? No, but that's what we long for during December. We want to get away from darkness and the, the kind of thoughts that a Bach passion will give us. These oratorios were basically secular entertainments. So the fact that it's about the story of Jesus Christ, it's not so much a coincidence,

but it's an added bonus, if you will, because all the other orators deal with Old Testament stories. It's a comfort, as you say, it's a comfort to us. Around these times when we're looking for some kind of sanity in our lives, we need ritual. And there's nothing wrong with a little mystery and ritual to focus our lives to see the bigger picture. And Messiah gives us the big picture. Handel is the kind of composer who can paint the huge canvas. Ultimately, that's what he is as an opera composer.

And he does the same thing in Messiah. Movement three, one One Messiah or many So we're here to look at the Messiah Both from a cultural point of view But also from a musical point of view Because you are a conductor You know, I think people don't understand

Exactly what a conductor does I mean, in fact, I know people don't understand what you get attached because they come and they watch you waving your arms around and they think to themselves, wouldn't they just keep playing even if he wasn't waving his arms around? Or they say, oh, I'd love to do that too. Yeah, well, we all would love to do that too. That is no question. But, you know, it's interesting. You know, we talk about one Messiah. We talk about the Messiah. We've been talking about it. There is no. I mean, that's a complete fraud. You know, there's so many messias in a way. He remodeled the work every season. He custom fit the arias, according to the cast of singers, and their voice types. He would rewrite them entirely. So we have three or four versions of most of the arias.

But these are all marvelous in their own way. Yes, it is not a fixed piece. This is such an important idea, though. I mean, you understand that because you look at the scores. But when we think of classical art and the importance that classical art, it's literature, whether it's music, the sense that there's something eternal about it, something unchanging about it. That's a need, I think, we have as a society. The reality of it is much more fluid, and it's scary to think that it's fluid. We want these things to be

fixed, you know? Well, I think it's also a 20th, 21st century thing that we need to have things in a certain way. The 19th century didn't look at it that way. Mozart updated Messiah. to the tastes of the time. And this kind of rewriting is the kind of thing that was going on right through the 19th century into the kind of bombast that we get in Messiah with the modern symphony orchestra and the chorus of a thousand.

Well, I want to talk to you about that because I know you don't like the word authentic and the people in what we call the historically informed performance movement, but I'm going to use authentic for a moment because the idea of getting back to the way things, some version of the way, it's such an important idea and it's such a recent idea it means something to me that we

as you say the 19th century had no qualms in that why well let's listen first and then I'll ask you this question yeah so I'm going to play two versions of the overture one of which is yours okay the second one is yours I think you mentioned to me that the first messiah you ever heard on record was sir Malcolm sergeant is that correct 1946 okay so here's the opening of Messiah this is the Huddersfield choir so take a listen this is one interpretation of how Messiah would sound. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Now. Yeah. Now. Now, Now, here's the way you conduct that same piece of music.

Those are two different pieces of music. That is not an interpretation of ours. That is a different piece of music. It's so shocking to me when I hear it. And the sergeant was very, very famous. The notes on the page that gave rise to the Malcolm Sargent version and they gave rise to that are the same. Yes.

But those are just notes. They're shorthand. You have to know the language. You can take the same notes and you can translate them into your own familiar language or you can go back and figure out what that language is and what do these notes mean within the context of that language so notes the black specs on the page are just the beginning and I need to try and figure out what the composer is telling me and and music is

very cryptic that way and that's why we all bash our heads against the wall saying I wish he was just here could you just answer the question for me what the hell do you mean here Movement for the original Messiah. So the question of historically informed performance raises the question of what Handel thought Messiah was in his time. Because for us, it's, as you say, it's this ritual, we trooped down, you know, we sing along, it's wonderful, and we bring our texts, and we have a wonderful time. You know, that's not what was happening in England when he was writing this piece.

I mean, it was completely different for him. And it seems we need to know, to really appreciate this piece, what motivated him to write it. Completely. And the whole idea of having an oratorio season, in London was due to the fact that England was having a lot of social problems at the time. You had the real huge problem of gin, where it was being made in basements and mothers were drinking it. People were dying from impure gin.

There was crime, poverty, the decadence and the immorality of the upper classes. All these things were troubling to the government and to the church. and so they decided that during Lent this should be a time of reflection and for contemplation and so opera wasn't allowed and instead it was replaced by the oratorio and the oratorio is basically like an opera

without sets and costumes and it deals with Old Testament texts moralistic things this is like a moral, there's a real moral sense Very much so. We call it Handles Messiah. Handles Messiah, we're going to go Handles Messiah, but there's a forgotten man in Messiah. Someone had to put together the word.

Charles Jennings, this forgotten, unknown, obscure figure who put together the text for Messiah. And the text for Messiah are extraordinary because we're telling the life of Jesus. And all the texts, virtually, not all, but a lot of them are from the Old Testament. They're written 700 years before Jesus' birth. And in fact, except for one small portion that we'll listen to, none of the gospel texts are used. There's some from Revelation, there's some from the letters to Corinthians, and he's changed the words of some of these things. He's sort of played fast and loose with the scriptures to create something of his own. Yeah, but for a very real purpose, which we have no understanding.

I mean, talking about a surprise about the Messiah. This is a part of a religious controversy. Completely. I had no idea of that at all. There was a faction called Deism that was raising its head, and to some people it was a very ugly head. Well, but Deism is this notion that it's basically God without Christianity. It's God in nature and God within the world. Yeah, but they rejected the idea of prophecy and revelation,

and therefore, in a way also rejecting the idea of anything to do with mystery in religion. this really disturbed the Church of England it disturbed a lot of people Jennings was a very strong anti-daist and he created the text of Messiah as you say he used Old Testament prophecy and revelation to tell the story of Christ to say you know what

there is proof that this is important and it's a kind of a if you will a propaganda piece where he gives that text to handle the best composer in the country to push that propaganda forward. Now, Jennings also was an oddball. He was the thorn in Handel's side from day one, and he always felt that Handel just mangled

anything that he gave him. You know, it's interesting, because when we listen, we innocently sing, you know, fore unto us a child is born, or hallelujah, or we have no idea that we're participating in a religious, vital, mean, religious, just controversy when we're doing this. At the time, yes. But this idea of mystery, you notice that the idea of this mysticism of things bigger than us comes at the least expected moments. They don't

happen in big choruses or big areas. They happen in the retic at evil. Behold, a virgin shall conceive. They're there to show, aha, here's another prophecy, another mystery, where the revelation. So go away, deism. A virgin shall conceive and bear a son And shall call his name, Emmanuel, God with us. All about that till this good tidings to Zion, Yet he a-king to know I'm hunting to mountain. Movement five, the beginning of Messiah, and it's

the life to Zion. Movement Five, the music. You mentioned at the beginning, and I can't argue with you, that for all the talk about Messiah and its texts and its historical context, it is the music of this piece that is the secret of its success. But what's the secret of the success of the music is what I'd like to know, because you know, from my point of view as a lay person, as well as the melodies, it's so accessible

this music. You know, it just seems to be written perfectly for you to hear it. I don't know if that makes any sense. It does. It does. As I said before, many of the melodies are so lyrical. And, you know, there's one point that is subliminal in the way. If you look at the arias in Messiah, most of them are in triple meter. One, two, three, three, three, one, two, I know that my, and there's this beautiful So it's like a dance. It is. Triple meter is like a waltz. It lets you flow through the music. This is, I think, where the positivism comes in in the piece, this openness that carries us through the entire piece. And, you know, the choruses

are probably the key, although you wouldn't want to, I mean, the aria's art guard. So let's talk a bit about, and he shall purify. And so there's another little aspect of this. So this is the one that ends. He shall purify the sons of Levi. What? In purifying the sons of Levi, you know, as a son of Levi, you know, suggests to me that I'm going to be melted down and then refashioned. Well, that's exactly. Exactly. Yeah, so there's an edge to this, you know. But you don't get that. You know, for two reasons. It comes out of the aria, but who may abide the day if it's coming for he is like a refiner's fire. But the thing is like a refine for a fine.

But the thing is, it goes directly into the chorus. Notice the chorus starts with an and. So it's, for he is like a refiner's fire, and he shall purify the sons of Levi. Is all one sentence. So he goes very easily from the chorus, but actually if you take it the correct tempo,

you get the licking flames with lantan-dum-bom-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-ddd-ddddddd-dddd-dd-ddddddddddh And it comes from it itself. The music comes from a little Italian cantata. To take something that's a simple little duet for two soprano voices from something he wrote early he decides this would be great stuff for this particular chorus and the text works. It works beautifully.

Messiah revealed, Movement 6, Handel the great storyteller. So one of the great things about Handel, you mentioned that he was an opera composer and the storytelling. I mean, apart from all the theology, you know, just the sheer storytelling that happens in Messiah is pretty remarkable and especially remarkable because when we think of an oratorio, generally there are characters.

I mean, it's not staged. There's a plot. There's a plot, and there's characters, and we have this great story, and there's none of that here. There's no characters. There's no, I mean, there's a sort of a plot, but not really. It's a very... It's all implied. And yet it's so beautifully told.

That's such... I talk about a secret, a composer, a mystery, a secret of how you can tell a story without having a character, without having a speech. Yes. How does he do that? Now, what's the secret to him doing that? Well, I find that in Messiah, he does something more than he does in other oratories,

maybe because of this lack of explicit story and drama, in that he takes traditional forms of the retitivo, the pitter-patter stuff fast, and then you've got something in between, which is called the Campanado, and then you have the next step is Arioso, which is almost an aria, and then chorus. Here Handel meld things.

He connects maybe not a recet into an aria. Maybe he'll go from a recet to a chorus, or he'll waffle going back and forth. And one of the best places that he does this is in the nativity sequence. So this is the one place in Messiah where they do use Luke. They use gospel texts because, you know, and there were shepherds in the fields. How can you not use those texts? So I want to play that because it starts with this unusual pastoral. Sort of like a second overture, it begins this.

It's a little bagpipe tune. Bagpipe tune. It is. And it's the Italian bagpipers. They still do it to this day. At Christmas tide, they come down from the hills, playing their pipes to welcome the Christ Child. And they play these lilting lullaby-ish melodies on their bagpipes. And Handel, of course, spent time in Italy.

And he spent time in Italy in his 20s. And he heard this. So when he's back in London, at this particular moment, he's thinking of the coming birth of Christ, what better way than to announce it with a little bagpipe tune. Now, you hear the drone of the pipes? I do. And even the ornaments are bagpipish. And he writes mezzo piano in the distance,

like a memory almost, of his good days in Italy. The shepherds out in the fields, tending our clothes. Serene. And now the last note. last note becomes the first note of the recit. There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping locks over their flock line, now strings come in, and it's big wings.

As the angel descends. And then the hesitation of the shepherds. And a bit of worry? Oh dear. So very simple. Now we have another Now we have another And these whole host of angels

Coming down Here the little wings And here they are. Jubilation in the heavens. And now his music for peace on earth is just an octave. And quiet, calm. And then back up to heaven. And the angels.

Flying around. And now they're falling. because at the beginning he says play them at a distance piano and becoming closer and closer and back to peace on earth and now they have the message it becomes fugal because it's important good will listen to this shepherds And they all start flying around again. Glory to God. Glory to God.

Glory to God. And the hymn of and peace on earth is now in harmony. Another fugal bit. You're repeating the words. Like Foghorn, leghorn, you're saying, I said, goodwill. And I say, good. And as quickly as they arrive to tell this to the shepherds,

it dissipates, and he reduces the orchestra to just a little string band that's slowly making its way back up into heaven and gone. that entire thing that we just listened to was three, about four minutes of music. You know what? I want you sitting beside me for every performance in the side. Doing that from the beginning to three hours later to the end. That was fantastic. It's so interesting to hear from your perspective, of course, because of I can hear you speak it

and I can hear you conduct it at the same time. And it's what you were talking about before, about revelation. So, you know, surprise is one thing where you see something you didn't expect. But revelation is broader and more wonderful. Because what it is is music I've heard, and then you reveal to me, through your own insight and through your own training and your own instincts, exactly what this means. And four minutes that are, of course, we all know, lead to the great aria rejoice greatly, which is just a reflection of the nativity scene that we've just had. It's so potent. On Ideas, you're listening to Messiah, we're listening to Messiah Revealed.

We're heard on CBC Radio 1 in Canada and around the world at cbc.ca.ca.ca. slash ideas. I'm Nala Ayed. Flown WestJet, now you're part of the ultra-extra, basic clothes. Just like WestJet flight attendants, you're getting less for more, while a greedy corporation rakes in the profits. You'll get exclusive perks like surprise fees and shrinking legroom, while flight attendants rack up thousands of unpaid hours, working for free during boarding, safety checks, and delays.

It's a downright disgraceful club, but you don't have to be a member. Tell WestJet that respect, fair pay, and working conditions shouldn't be ultra-extra basic. A message from QP825. Hi, Steve Patterson here, host of the debaters, Canada's comedy competition, judged by live audience applause. This week's episode asks if children are smarter than their parents. So tune in to find out who wears the smarty pants in their families, wherever you get your podcasts.

Evar's Torrance, director of the Tafel Music Chamber Choir and veteran CBC broadcaster Robert Harris, are talking about Handel's 1741 masterpiece, Messiah, one of the most popular pieces of music of all time. And yet one that still has lots of surprises and secrets, even after more than two and a half centuries. This episode is called Messiah Revealed. Movement 7.

The Passion The Passion. So we verse, I guess, not unexpectedly, the longest portion of Messiah is the passion section, the section of Christ's, I don't know what you would call it, because, and I say that, because normally the passion concerns the crucifixion of Jesus, that's the moment of his greatest triumph eventually, but also his greatest pain and our greatest confusion, you know, we see God, you know, dying in front of us. But of course, because Jennings doesn't use New Testament texts, he can't set the crucifix.

So the low point in Messiah is not the death of Christ. It's the social rejection of Christ when truth isn't recognized, where it's presented to you and you don't see it. This opening of part two, the kind of this bleak, bleak situation that we get in, in the the opening, he was despised, the rejection, the mocking. It's that aspect. It's not the physical passion, but more the psychological, the rejection, as you say. An oratorio traditionally is always in three parts. So we've been through the introduction, Comfort Ye, the nativity, his birth, and now part the second opens, as you say, with this G minor. And it's in a form, again, that reflects the opening overture, the symphony.

And here, though, we have this exhortation on the word, behold. But the orchestra, after this, I call them two big, heavy, dusty Bibles. You get two, there's the second one. Then the orchestra does this. And then the second's at. Everyone's behold, behold, behold, behold. They get a cadence, and then find the choir one by one. They're doing the same thing.

This leap up. And the whole opening section is nothing more than an amplification, just like in the hallelujah chorus forever and ever, ever. Behold, behold, and then he finally says, what? The Lamb of God that taketh away, the sin of the world. He comes through big cadence.

Then he goes back to say the same, the same, but in the same thing. But in the middle... But in the middle... On that take a thither way... In G minor, cadence here. The cadence.

The sopranos come in by themselves with that note. Now that is... It's in G minor. It's a third, but we don't know where we are. Now, that could be part of this, right? Yes, or it could be... That's amazing. And, of course, he's prefigurating exactly what's going to happen with...

He was despised. Exactly the same chain. He does two things. The sacrificial lamb, that taketh away, there's a calm. And now the figure of, that taketh away is calm, it's soothing. That taketh away the sin of the world, which he's going to, it's a foreshadowing of what he's about to do in E flat major for he wants to despise it. You know, the sin of the world, the sin of God. You know, what's so interesting to me about this is that as a listener,

I understand all of this, but it's all subliminal. I have no idea. It's going by very quickly. Well, in a way, you don't need to know, but you are moved through this journey, through what the music does to you. But it's so interesting when you do unpack it to see, number one, the skill.

Yep. This isn't just a guy who just sat down and wrote a tune. Underneath, where you're not even expecting it and, you know, there's skill that you can't imagine. And the economy, we talked about the economy. So, you know, you're in G minor, and you're in E-Fatting, just one note. And you completely change.

change the character. And the other thing is, is that that E flat, we're about to hear he was the same tune. It's the same tune. He snuck it in. So when you hear he was despise it, maybe a part of your mind. I've heard that before. Yep. I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be. Thank you. I'm going to and

the and I'm I'm the you know I'm .

You won't despise you. Despise her ejected of men, a man of soul, a man of soul, a man of sorrow, a man of soul. after he was despised it, this keeps ratcheting up. It's more, I mean, because we're approaching a moment of transition, right? Because unlike a passion, which ends with the crucifixion and then a very, you know, the response to it.

Yes. Messiah is taking us all the way through to revelation. So at some point we have to turn. Turn. But before we turn, he really nails home this. And it's all social isolation. Does this connect to what we talked about before about the social. and moral conditions of when it was...

I think it does. I think it does. It's that we have lost our path. We have lost our way. And at this moment, everything is chaotic. So, again, it's not illustrating the death or crucifixion of Christ. It is the breaking of his heart. I revuk

that rogued his heart. His home of herne, His home of Herndes, His home of Herndes, My rebuk has brokened his heart. So we're at a low point, we've had an intervention, but as we've said before, we're not finished yet. In other words, we're heading in another direction. And I think that's what's so important about Messiah is it has a positive resolution.

Yes, and this is the fulcrum right here at this point. Right at this point, right? Because we're not far away from the hallelujah chorus. And what interests me is how military, not just militaristic, but it's rough. When we turn towards glory, we turn towards violence. Movement 8, Messiah and Empire. Thou shalt break them, you know, thou shalt break them.

Yeah, so there's an element of glory and, let's say, warishness. Well, that's what the 18th century is all about. Dominance, military might, rule Britannia, you know. And it really was to show England in a good light. It considered itself the New Jerusalem. It became the centerpiece, the crown jewel of everything that represented England and the British Empire and the colonies. It just spread. We're fighting other cultures, we're fighting other lands, we're fighting for England. And that's what's so interesting to me about how the Messiah got re-evaluated at a time when imperialism became the dominant English way of life. These are the days in the late 19th, early 20th century when you'd have, as you talked about before, the Messiah.

Thousands. Thousands of people perform. Well, it became the vehicle for these things. If you talk about Messiah being corrupted, to my ear, this is what that sounds like. And it's just, again, might is right, kind of, it shows a different kind of aspect of this music. You and I have talked about where Messiah is popular, and it's not universally popular around the world. It's English speaking. and those places in Africa. So you hear it

in France, you hear it in Italy, but if you go on YouTube to look for versions of the hallelujah chorus, you find them from Nigeria and you find them from South Africa. You find them every place that the tentacles of the empire went. But that's adding a layer from

our own experience. And I try and ignore that. In my job, so to speak, when I get to this point, I'm trying to make this the revelation, the glory, the light, the shining light. And for me, that's what, no matter what underlying motives were there or what they may have been expressing in the original texts as well in terms of domination of Christendom over

other faiths. For me, it is, praise God, the words, Hallelujah, actually, mean a praise to God. Movement 9 Movement 9. I know that my Redeemer liveth. So despite, you know, how Messiah may have been used or abused, you know, if we go back into the work, the last section of the after, yeah, part three, it's a very, very important part of the work, obviously, because this is the point where we, we as Christians or members of the faith, or member of the human race, finally achieve our final destiny, you know? And this notion of transformation, this notion that death can be defeated, this notion that we can be changed, this notion that we can be changed. and we can achieve, you know, eternal life is so powerful, I mean, in everyone and express.

Well, we need something to grasp onto because if we die and that's it, that's hard to swallow. It is hard to swallow, but, you know, more and more, it interests me, you know, more and more in the 20th century, philosophers, artists, and individuals try to come to terms with that, you know, because the century that they witnessed force them into putting aside or at least not being able to grasp so quite so comfortably and quite so easily this notion and oh everything will be fine in the end but it doesn't make it any less needful

I think I think we still need it and to me this last section even in its truncated form is really really powerful and it all leads in effect to the final chorus the amen this is the most contrapuntal the most complicated piece

that they're going to be singing all day or hearing all day. It's a master work. So we've looked and mentioned that subtly like we saw and behold the Lamb of God and the way it was connected to he was despise

very much under the surface. But the fugal beauty of the Amen is right on the surface. It's the artistry and how he takes simple outline which basically boils down to five notes. that's five notes

which incorporate the opening of the men and then he will play with that and do every contrapuntal compositional technique possible and it sounds to me like chant it reminds me of Gagorian chant it's gone the whole octave here in a few bars

now the next voice comes in It's a beautiful melody again as well. You see, there's no orchestra here. It's just the choir with continuum. And now they have a cadence And we get this most amazing angelic Yes, just music It's just the violins, right? Yes, a duet between the two violins

like two angels calling to one another We see heaven in this And when we least expect it, the glory of the Lord just hits us right where he needs to. So we've come to the end of the journey for three years. So we've come to the end of the journey with that, Amen. And as you've mentioned, you've been conducting Messiah for 35 years. one would think that all of the secrets it has have been revealed to you.

So what are the secrets, the essence of this piece that maybe isn't on the surface? If someone didn't know this piece of music at all and said to you, Messiah, I've heard about this, what should I know about this piece of music? What would you say to them? It speaks for me of humanity. its frailties, its possibilities, its hopes. Whether you're religious or not, whether you're of a certain faith or not, there is something elemental in the way these texts and the way the music hits you

if you are open to it, whether I'm listening to it, whether I'm directing it. I never get tired. I can never get tired of it. There's always something new that is revealed to me. That's the mystery, and that's what Jennings wanted. That's the mystery of this amazing work. The verse, thank you for taking us on. This chair has been really, really fascinating. It's such a rich experience,

and you've been so generous and expressing and sharing all of your incredible insights into the piece. So thank you very much. Well, thank you. It's been a real joy. Amen Ome Ome Ome

You've been listening to Messiah Revealed, featuring Ivar's Torrens, director of the Tafel Music Chamber Choir, and Ideas contributor, Robert Harris. Technical production, Danielle Duval. The web producer for Ideas is Lisa Ayuso. The senior producer is Nicola Luxchich. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayad. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca slash podcasts.