In Our Time - Handel's Messiah

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

Misha Glenny and his guests discuss the most famous oratorio of George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) and his librettist Charles Jennens (1700-1773). For his libretto, Jennens drew from Old and New Testament texts: prophecies about the coming of Jesus, the Messiah, the nativity, the suffering of Christ and his death and the Day of Judgement and redemption for all. Handel's Messiah had its premiere in 1742 in a secular Dublin music hall to great acclaim with a packed audience and Handel continued to adapt his Messiah for later performances, often shaping the work to the choirs or individual singers available. Messiah proved to be one of his most popular works, becoming a favourite of massed choirs around the world far beyond the scale of Handel’s original.With Donald Burrows Emeritus Professor of Music at the Open UniversityRuth Smith Trustee and Council Member of the Handel InstituteAndLarry Zazzo Countertenor, and Senior Lecturer in Music at Newcastle UniversityProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Donald Burrows, Messiah (full score, 2 vols, Hallische Händel Ausgabe, forthcoming)Donald Burrows, Messiah (Edition Peters, 1987)Donald Burrows, Messiah, Cambridge Music Handbooks (Cambridge University Press, 1991)Donald Burrows, Handel: Master Musicians series, 2nd edition (Oxford University Press, 2012)George Frideric Handel (ed. Donald Burrows et al.), Collected Documents vol. 3 (1734-42), vol 4 (1742-50), (Cambridge University Press, 2019, 2020)G.F. Handel, facsimile ‘Messiah’: the composer’s autograph manuscript (British Library, 2009)G.F. Handel, facsimile the composer’s Conducting Score of Messiah (Scolar Press, 1974) Arthur Holroyd, Reassuring 18th-Century Protestants: The Librettist’s Intended Message for Handel’s ‘Messiah’ (Quacks Books, 2018)Charles King, Every Valley: The Story of Handel’s Messiah (Doubleday/Bodley Head, 2024)Jens Peter Larsen, Handel’s Messiah: Origins, Composition, Sources (Adam and Charles Black, 1957)Richard Luckett, Handel’s Messiah: A Celebration (Victor Gollancz, 1992)Watkins Shaw, A Textual and Historical Companion to Handel’s ‘Messiah’ (Novello and Co, 1965)Ruth Smith, ‘The Achievements of Charles Jennens (1700–1773)’ (Music & Letters, 70, 1989)Ruth Smith, Charles Jennens: The Man behind Handel’s ‘Messiah’ (Handel House Trust/The Gerald Coke Handel Foundation, 2012)Ruth Smith, Handel’s Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought (Cambridge University Press, 1995)Calvin R. Stapert, Handel’s Messiah: Comfort for God’s People (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010)Judy Tarling, Handel’s Messiah: A Rhetorical Guide (first published 2014; Punnett Press, 2025)In Our Time is a BBC Studios productionSpanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Misha Glenny and expert guests explore the characters, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

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and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, in 1742 in a secular Dublin music hall, the first audience heard Handel's Messiah, a sacred oratorio, from its first word comfort to the chorus of hallelujahs to the last word, amen. The librettist Charles Jennings had drawn from biblical texts, prophecies about the coming of Jesus, the Messiah,

the nativity, the suffering of Christ and his death, and the day of judgment and redemption for all. Handel continued to adapt his Messiah for later performances, and it proved to be one of his most popular works, becoming a favourite of massed choirs around the world far beyond the scale of Handel's original. Well, with me to discuss Handel's Messiah are Ruth Smith, trustee and council member of the Handel Institute,

Larry Zazzo, counter-tenor, and senior lecturer in music at Newcastle University, and Donald Burroughs, Emeritus Professor of Music at the Open University. Donald, I'd like to start with you, Handel was born in Halle in Brandenburg in 1685, but he'd been based in London since around 1714. What should we know about his life and reputation in London?

His reputation in London in the first place was as an opera composer. He also carried with him experience from the previous years, trained as an organist in Haller. He signed up for the University of Halle. that only lasted a year. He was off to Hamburg, to the opera house. He's then composing operas, playing from the harpsichord, leading the performances in Hamburg. That's while the leading composer is away. As soon as the composer comes back again, he's off to Italy. There's no opera in Rome, but he does other things. He does church music, and it's there he writes his first oratorioes. And he goes to Hanover, where he is appointed Master of the Music. at the court, but on the condition he makes that he can go elsewhere because he wants to carry on writing operas. There's no opera in Hanover, and it's at that point that he then comes to London. He has to go back to his job in Hanover, but then he comes back to London again, and the

elector of Hanover is in the next in line to the British throne. Which presumably was to Handel's advantage. He foresaw this, to put it mildly there. Apparently, Handel wrote this very quickly within the space of about three weeks or so. Was that usual for him? He was a fast, intense worker. What we have with the autograph is a finished setting of the complete text. He started that on the 22nd of August, finished it on the 13th of September or whatever. It so happens that the 22nd of August is also a Saturday this year.

If you wanted to try it out, get a few quick. Quill pens, a couple of pints of black ink and 250 pages of music paper, and see if you can write it out in that time. So, you know, it is very quick. It is very quick. But it's the end of the process. Composition has happened up to that point. You don't just write the notes on paper.

A lot of thinking has gone into that. And a lot of it's going on in his head. A lot of it's going on in his head. The business of composition from the first stage, which is reading, Jennings's words and thinking, now how's this going to go? You have to think of the total structure of arias, what singers, who's going to sing this one, how's that going to go? What's the mood? Is it major or minor key? Is it fast? Is it slow? And then, of course, the business of actual musical themes, ideas that sometimes the words stimulate a particular melodic line. And quite often,

because Handel's got a head full of tunes, he reads some words and thinks, hmm, I've got something for that. And he riffles through his stuff and finds there's an old thing there somewhere that was just perfect for those words. I think it's really important to mention that it's an issue of borrowing.

I mean, what we think of as being such genius and such unique, these great melodic hooks that we think are so original. Messiah, in fact, Handel borrowed from Italian duets. So one of the famous choruses is, fore unto us, child is born. and everybody has it in their head. The original was an Italian duet, which begins,

No, di voe non vaidermi. And that's why it begins with four, which is a little bit odd from an English standpoint, right? It handles a German. But because it comes from another duet, somehow that makes it more memorable to us, I think. Donald, can you tell us exactly what an oratorio is? Well, in simple terms, it's something you perform in an oratory.

That is to say, a separate building not for the mass, not for church services, but for presentation of religious topics, which may be from scripture, it may be symbols of characters operating on humans, selfishness or time, or that sort of thing, or it may be lives of the saints or something like that. Opera and then Oratorio came along together, and they use the same musical forms. So the transition from opera to oratorio in that case wasn't quite so difficult. But of course you need a librettist. And Ruth Smith, I'd like to ask you about the librettist for Messiah, Charles Jennings.

What was his relationship with Handel like, both personally and professionally? Jenin started writing librettos for Handel, partly because he was a Handel addict. any words united with his music become sacred for me, he said, which is extraordinary given that Jennings was a devout Anglican. He wrote librettos for nobody else and he certainly wasn't looking for fame because he didn't

sign any of them. They were anonymous which is why right into the 19th and 20th centuries there was some doubt whether this obscure country squire could actually have put the text of Messiah together or conversely, well that was an easy job, it's just scripture verses.

but Jennings wanted to foster Handel's career in every possible way. He was very generous to handle in all sorts of ways. By the time he comes to do the libretto for Messiah, he's got a permanent subscription with Handel for copies of all Handel's music. He's already acquired all Handel's published music with generous subscriptions. Now he wants every note. And he built up an unrivaled Handel collection. I mean, it's still unrivaled, though now dispersed.

But at the time, it was unique. So he was wealthy. committed to handle. But the Messiah as a libretto, it begins with the word comfort. Why would that have a particular resonance for Jennings? Jennings was depressive, lonely. The times were out of joint for him. He was concerned, as many were, many devout Anglicans were, about the decline of religious faith in Britain. He was politically out of joint with the Times. Jennings believed in the divine right of kings. The head of Charles I, the executed monarch, Stuart Monarch, was on his seal ring. He was in a form of internal exile because you couldn't have any kind of public position,

any kind of public profession, whether they're in the military, parliament, the church, the university, unless you force war loyalty to the Stuart, which he wasn't prepared to do. So he was lonely politically, he was lonely socially, for that reason, partly. And then there was perhaps the worst thing of all and very much the background emotionally to Messiah, which was the way one of his brothers died, his sole surviving brother, when Jennings was 28 and his brother Robert was studying for the bar at the middle temple, cut his throat and threw himself out of the window. Now, of course, the suicide of one's brother would be a terrible thing for anybody, but it was particularly, I think, terrible for Jennings because by taking his own life,

Robert was cutting himself off from salvation after death. I asked the majority of the population in Britain at that time, were they Christian. They would say yes. If you were a Christian, you believed that there was judgment at death, and then there was hell or heaven. If you had taken your own life, there was hell. So Jennings was saddled with this terrible recognition that probably his brother would be rotting in hell forever.

So it's no surprise that Messiah begins with the word comfort. the second part of Messiah, behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world, the whole world. And finally, I know that my Redeemer liveth is how the final part ends. And all through,

we are being told that all shall be saved. And Handel, in a crucial chorus, repeats that, shall all, shall all be saved. So there's a very personal reason, I think, underlying his libretto. Larry Zazzo, Handel composes Messiah in 1741, and we'll discuss the first performances in a minute. But can you tell us about the singers available to handle,

the singers that handle liked, and why that mattered to him so much? He was mainly a composer of operas. He wrote 42, depending on how you count. 42 operas, basically two a year between the 20s and 1741, which is when he wrote his last opera. And right when he was composing Messiah, he was at a bit of a crisis where he was writing something,

for Dublin. He did not have access to his usual cohort of extremely versatile opera singers trained in Italy. Some of them were castradi. He did have one Italian singer, Avolio, but he didn't really know who his other singers were. Why didn't he have access to them at that time? Well, the opera company closed down and they were terribly expensive, and he couldn't afford to bring them over even if he had them, Ruth. And also there was a war on. And there was a war on. And so, you know, Italian singers were. weren't that easy to get. They weren't very keen to travel, and so fees were even greater. So they put their fees up even more. There is some singer inflation, even more than there is nowadays, I suppose, or I wish there was more inflation. So he was in a situation where

he has started to write some oratorios, and it was remarked on a very famous quote, which is worth just quoting for very quickly. Horace Walpole writes to Horace Mann. Handel has set up an oratorio against the operas and succeeds. He's hired all the goddesses from farces and singers of roast beef. And that's such wonderful. So who were these singers of roast beef? What's a different type of singer? These aren't singers of Italian opera. These are singers of ballad opera. So think beggars opera. Think of the precursors of musicals, a different type of musical style, shorter musical phrases, less virtuosity, more limited vocal range. And so I think Handel is writing for he doesn't know whom, but perhaps a singer who's a

slightly less trained, a singer of English. And a classic example of that who he didn't know he was going to have was Susanna Kibber. Some of your listeners might be surprised. I always thought it was Susanna Zibber, but are we saying Susanna Kibber now? So Susanna, born Susanna Arne, to Thomas Arn, so born into a theatrical family, an acting impresario family. She married the son of Kali Kibber, theophilus Kibber, so she was the daughter-in-law of Kali, also. a famous actor Impressario. Thomas Arn had this rival Dr. Laine Company.

She turns up in Ireland. She's doing, she's an actress. She's a tragedian. She had a terrible, terrible background. A really terrible husband. Theophilus was a gambler. He was a spendthrift. He was abusive.

He basically pimped her out to an aristocrat called William Sloper. There was a terrible trial in which all of the dirty laundry was aired. So there was a, a huge scandal around that first performance. And she was terribly, she was terribly embarrassed. But a good singer?

But, well, Bernie said that she had a voice like a thread. So think of someone who could sing in a very declamatory style, very simply, but with incredible pathos, an incredible emotion. Can we confirm or otherwise that you sang the same part as Susanna Kibba? I did indeed, yes. And I also sang the same part as Gaetano Guadena. Dhani, who was the castrato who sang in 1750. So you have that virtuosity of the Italian castrato

and this wonderful simplicity of Susanna Kibber. It is done by countertenors, but it's there, all of those, that music is equally done beautifully by Metsu Sopranos, I must say. Donald, before we get into the work itself, as far as I understand, before he wrote Messiah, he was laid low by some serious health problems, including a very serious stroke. I don't think at this stage that was a really serious question.

He seems to have recovered very quickly from the 1737 stroke or whatever it was. He goes abroad for a time, he comes back, he writes the funeral anthem for the Queen in no time at all. He's back in business. When you get to his later years, he then starts to have health problems that interfere with his work more,

and of course his eyesight also. goes a little. But I think really he's back springing to life in the Messiah period. And before he wrote Messiah, what are the works which lead up to Messiah, as it were? Earlier in 1741, he'd done his last Italian opera in London. After that, there were no more Italian operas. So leading up to 1741, he had been doing opera and oratorio within the theatre seasons. There comes a time early in 1741, he didn't really get on with the management at the King's Theatre, which was the Grand Opera House. He'd gone to Covent Garden the new theatre. And for a number of years, John Rich thought, aha, we will do plays and Handel can do some oratorios and operas.

After a few years, he found it he couldn't really quite afford it. He didn't have the same resources as the King's Theatre. So what had happened was he said to handle, you can have my secondary theatre at Lincoln's In Fields. It's cheaper. But I think he thought by the end of that, I'm not going to be going back to the King's Theatre. Castratia is so difficult to find these days.

It was the perfect moment when he had this invitation to go to Dublin, to get out. In the Range Rover Sport, performance is more than a promise. It's something you feel on every drive. With the choice of powerful mild hybrid and plug-in, hybrid engines, Range River Sport responds instantly, bringing unbridled power and precise handling. It's a perfect balance. Explore more atrangerover.ca. The Signal Awards recognize the podcast that define culture, and being honored by the Signal Awards sets your production team apart with

recognition from the industry's top experts and access proof that your work is a standard bearer for podcasting worldwide. By entering, your work is heard by the Signal Awards Judging Academy, an invitation-only body of podcast professionals from acclaimed organizations which include the BBC. Grow your audience, celebrate your team, and stand out. The final entry deadline to submit is the 26th of June. Enter your podcast at signalaward.com for consideration. Well, Ruth, let me ask you about Dublin, first of all. Was everyone surprised that Messiah was premiered there? No, because Handel's music was already known and liked, and that was a very good reason for going there. Handel had a very good friend in the form of the first violinist at the

Lord Lieutenant's orchestra, and the fact that his music was known there was one reason why he might feel confident that he could premiere an oratorio there. There were two cathedrals with professional choirs, and as anybody who sung in the choruses of Messiah knows, the choruses are not easy. So certainly having professional choirs would be useful. Dublin had built a new concert hall, neutral ground, neither a theatre where the sacred word might, as turned out to be the case, be objected to. It was a good concert hall. It had a good capacity. There was nothing like that in London. And also, Dublin, like London, in fact, had a very strong ethos of philanthropy, which was very much needed because there had been a terrible famine when one of the many Irish famines in Dublin. And it was said that

the Lord Lieutenant felt that it was time that there should be some uplifting public entertainment. Well, what better than Messiah? And a very good opportunity to raise money for charitable causes, which it successfully did. And I think if Handel had been really canny, he would have realised this was the way forward for Messiah, not to do it for profit, though Jennings himself had said that he hoped that Handel would perform it as a one-off for his own benefit, for his own profit. But this performance in Dublin for charity absolutely one-euvre. everybody over, as well, of course, as the quality of the music. And the pathos of Mrs. Kibber's

singing. Absolutely. The dress rehearsal was so crowded that the newspaper advertisements for the actual Premier asked the ladies to come without hoops in their dresses and the gentlemen without swords so that there would be more space for the charitably inclined. Well, there were rave reviews, one of which said, words are wanting to express the exquisite delight it afforded to the admiring crowded audience. The sublime, the grand and the tender adapted to the most elevated and moving words conspired to transport and charm the ravished heart and air.

Quite a review. Larry, have you had reviews like that? I should point out that you've performed in Messiah. Once I was called subtle and my wife laughed. But I have performed it many times. it's such a unique piece and talking about its place in history and its place in Handel's career.

I think going back to what Damned was saying and where Handel was when he was composing the Messiah, if Handel had his druthers, I think, he was a man of the stage. He loved operas. And if he could have, if it could have found a way for it to be profitable, he would have continued happily, I think,

writing operas. So he went to Oratorio not because he was having some sort of spiritual enlightenment moment. Yeah, he was a spirit. He was a devout. He went to St. George's Hanover every week, from what I understand. However, it was simply a financial issue for him, and the financial and the artistic are always very close for Handel. And it simply was the case. And if anyone's interested, Alan Harris has done some wonderful work with the Bank of England. And she discovered that by 1739, Handel had withdrawn his last 50 pounds from his cash account and put no more money in his bank account until 1743. I wondered about this because I noticed that he managed to buy a house in Brook Street in Mayfair in the 1720s. With respect, he didn't buy the house in Mayfair. He rented it. He never bought it.

And as for him being broke, this is a myth about why he had to go to Dublin with creditors snapping at his heels. And yes, putting on a whole season of performances, which is the way one did it then, walk-up tickets hadn't really been invented yet, was very expensive. So between 12 and 16,000 pounds, that's a lot. However, Handel had an annuity from the crown of £600 a year, which we should multiply by 200. So he's got £120,000 a year coming in. However, that is not nearly enough to have in reserve for a whole opera season.

So, yes, he couldn't afford to hire. He was subsidising his own opera seasons. However, by the time he retired and largely only through Oratorio, He was a multi-millionaire. So his oratorio seasons were very, very profitable. But it really was an accident, I think. Okay, we're trying to get a sense of why it grips the audience as much as it does. Why is Messiah different from so many other oratorios?

It's just unlike anything. Well, that's a... Why is it unlike anything? I think one of the things is that, whereas... As with the operas and most oratorios, you've got settings of metrical verse, rhymed verse and such like. What's happening with this is you have the different rhythms from the prayer book and from the Psalms, which means that you've got a particular flow to the English language,

which is not like other things which have been written by poets, shall we say. So there is something that people recognise about the working of the English language, about religious texts, and Handel has this knack of getting just the right way of setting it to music, you know, to get the music to fit the mood and the sense of the words. Ruth. Picking up on what Donald has said, over 60% of the verses that Jennings uses from the Bible, from the Old Testament, much richer in imagery than the New Testament. and Handel was a genius at evoking emotion through his setting of imagery.

And so much of the imagery in Messiah is active, a potter's vessel being smashed, a refiners fire. This isn't pictorial, just its energetic imagery. And often Handel also makes us think by giving musical variety to his depiction of a single image. So at the beginning we have the contrast of darkness and light, those that walked in darkness, have seen a great light. But we get it twice over, in the words, and Handel varies it. One is melodic, the other is harmonic. I'm interested that you and Donald both talk about the text and imagery.

Larry, what about the music? Well, the music, and I've thought about this a lot, why is the Messiah so different? And as a performer, I could say, there's no other piece of Handel or any other piece, for that matter, in which I feel like I have such a connection with the audience. And unlike an opera where a character's feels. an emotion and the audience is passively kind of observing that and maybe sympathetically feeling what I'm feeling. In this piece, and if I just go through my own bits, I'm questioning the audience,

but who may abide? If God before us, who shall be against us? O death, where is thy sting? A statement, I know that my Redeemer liveth. Ask in the audience to do something. Arise, get thee up into the high mountains, lift up thy voice. The trumpet shall sound predicting. The trumpet shall sound. Behold, a virgin shall conceive.

So it's very active engagement with the audience that almost demands a response from them. But I'm interested, you're also talking about the text. I'm really interested in why the music speaks to us as well. Is it because of the fusion between the text and the music? I mean, is this one of his best works musically, or is it... Maybe it's one of his richest musically. Don would be able to correct me on this. But unlike the operas and unlike a lot of the other oratorios,

there's very little recitative, plain, simple, plot-type test. Speaking of the text. So it's very rich in arias and even richer in choruses. And also it's quite concise, I think, in the individual numbers. So we're getting huge variety all the time. And one thing that Jennings understood, sorry, this is back to the words, but it's back to the structure that Handel is actually dealing with,

Jennings understood that one of Handel's main compositional methods was progression by contrast, and that is all the way through Messiah. It may be a microcontrast as in a single number, as in, for example, he was despised, where the outer sections, as is normal in a Brock aria, are based on the same music, and the inner section is contrasting in his big contrast, so deep pathos followed by outrage and anger at what has happened to Christ. or it could be a really major transition contrast, as in, for example, the end of part two, the beginning of part three. We go from the grandeur of Christ's dominance and triumph over the whole created universe in the Hallelujah chorus, drums, trumpets, and so on, the whole chorus.

And then we come down to, I know that my Redeemer lives, the voice of the single individual. And not only the single individual, but the worms in the body of the individual. So Jenin's absolutely understood this gift of handles for making contrasts. And yes, it is the words as well as the music. But almost has the sense the whole universe is there in this piece somehow, without being too hyperbolic. It has everything. It has the beginning, the end, the suffering individual, the community.

It's uplifting. You can go through a whole range of emotions, as I certainly do as a performer and as a listener. There is something about the choruses which are, So every single line in the choruses are very, very singable, almost in a soloistic sense. And there's something about it which makes people want to get up on their feet. There's something about it which leads to these huge scratch messias, which is the Royal Albert Hall being filled with people with their dog-eared scores,

singing along to the choruses. I think the choruses are so incredibly strong. It's a very communal work, and it's a very generous work. I'm sorry this is again the text, but the music bears it out. Very my favorite bet, other than them, and really not the bits I sing, but it's, it is all we like sheep have gone astray. And it's an example to me of how Handel is thinking dramatically, but in a different way, not in the sense of an opera or in the sense of a story. So all we like sheep have gone astray. And there's these lines that kind of go nowhere.

We have to. And it's a, it's, I just smile when I hear it. And you hear this frail. humanity, but then right when you least expect it, boom, F minor, and all of a sudden, it crashes in in the middle of these people, these stray sheep, and it's so human and so sublime at the same time. And this is what I think is the most wonderful thing about Messiah and Handel in general, the very human and the very sublime right next to each other. Ruth, you wanted to come in there, but you've already mentioned.

mentioned Jennings' spiritual dilemma and his depression. What are the sort of political and religious sensibilities in London around the time of the Messiah? I think Messiah can be understood, certainly from Jennings' point of view, as a response to, as the poet John Dunn put it, the new philosophy puts all in doubt. Religious certainties, religious beliefs had been torpedoed from at least three directions. One is that God had been depersonalized. Isaac Newton had shown that the universe was not presided over by a God who notices everything we do, but a clockmaker operating by the laws of mathematics who had wound it up, remote, transcendental. So how could such a good God be interested in me or you individuals or in how we lead our lives

and therefore how we get saved after death? then there was, I suppose one could call it, a new respect for humanitarian morality, measured against which. How did we think of the God of the Old Testament, who, after all, was also the God of the New Testament, this partial unjust God who encouraged a rabble tribe coming out of Egypt, probably with pagan views in their spiritual makeup, wandering around in the desert. This was not a good father figure. and then there was actual biblical scholarship which was showing that the Bible was not, after all, directly dictated by God to one person to write down. It was the work of many different hands.

It had inconsistencies. If it was actually human work, why believe it? You know, what status did it have? So it was very easy to find grounds for skepticism. Religion was the main subject of publishing. Most people went to church, The sermon was the main public address system. So balancing these views was quite difficult for people.

And there was great concern. I mean, if you look at what's actually published at the time, religious doubt is as worrying to the writers as, say, climate change or terrorism now and got at least as many column inches. Well, Larry, that brings me on to something else, which is that the Messiah was almost seen as too sacred by some and not sacred enough, by others. How did Handel manage that balancing act?

Absolutely. I think it's always been viewed that way and still is to some extent. Really interesting. One of the original reviews, someone kind of wrote into the newspaper and said, what a profanation of God's name and word is this. David said, how can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? But sure, he would have thought it much stranger to have heard it sung in a playhouse. So the context, where it was performed, really incensed people of Christian faith. I'm going to fast forward and going to talk a little bit maybe about the soulful celebration, the Quincy Jones, Mervyn Warren version. You better contextualize it. I will contextualize it in that.

Mervyn Warren had said that they were going to do a version of the trumpets cell sound with Dizzy Gillespie and Winton Marcellus. One of the great what-ifs of history would have been if that happened. And Winton Marsalis said, I don't want to do this because I don't want to desecrate the Messiah. So it was very interesting. Even from someone from a jazz tradition, the Messiah is seen in so many ways as this great sacred cow. It is unique in Handels, Uvres, in the sense that it is all sacred words, right? It is not just an opera monquet. It's not just a Bible story, but Ruth, you have some.

Ruth's dying to come in there. Well, no, actually, just to modify that a bit, yes, of course Messiah is unique in all sorts of ways. but it did have a predecessor in Handel's output. When Jennings is writing about sending Handel the libretto of Messiah and Handel decides he won't do it for the time being because he wants something of a gayer turn, Jennings describes it as another scripture collection. And one reason that Handel didn't pick it up maybe

was that their previous scripture collection had actually bombed. And that was Israel in Egypt, which Handel had done two years previously and had only managed three performances. That's all biblical text. But Messiah includes New Testament text. And I think that made a great difference in 18th century England. New Testament text was more sacred than Old Testament text.

And I think that's the wonderful quotation that Larry just read us about desecrating God's word. Jennings was very careful to minimize actual words of Christ and actual naming of Christ, but it is in there. And of course, people would have recognized it. So, Donald, is there a particular event where the church appears to approve of Messiah, having been a little skeptical before about it appearing in theatres? I think that there are various aspects to this. One is, of course, the big criticism of Messiah, which is always quoted, was one newspaper article.

We don't know how representative that was. Could have just been one reader. It could just have been, I mean, it's a very eloquent... a statement of the theatre is not the right place to do this. And actually, Handler had made it worse or someone. At the top of the score, he writes Messiah and Oratorio. Unlike some other ones in the predecessors, you often have an or sacred drama.

He doesn't do that. It's just Messiah and Oratorio, leaving certain things a little bit vague. And what's what's one? worse is that in the newspaper, they thought, well, or whoever put the advert in the newspaper, the very first London performances, they thought, Miss Sire, that's a bit dodgy. So there will be performed a new sacred oratorio. Well, that was worse, right? And that's what got the attacks on it, really.

But we don't know, really, how representative the attacks were, first of all, because Handel then did two more performances. didn't cancel Messiah after the first one. He finished the season, giving two more. That's sort of one aspect to that. And then the other was that there was this question about the bishops. There's a little hint in there about it was not approved by the bishops or whatever. It may be that it had gone to the inspector of stage plays. The censor, effectively. The censor. And something had happened there. But when we get to later on, and it's performed at the founding hospital,

someone writes in his diary, oh, and there were bishops there. So the hearing of oratorio may sometimes be thought of as Orthodox. So the whole question of the church's attitude, this seems to be a few clergy, one sector of the London audience, but it didn't stop handle doing it. He treated it in his programmes just like any other work. He didn't actually do the same work every year.

But if you look at what happens, he didn't stay away from it as if it was something that was too much trouble. Ruth, you mentioned that initially when Jennings sent his libretto that Handel wanted to do something gayer, I think was how he described it. Was he then convinced by the libretto when he started studying it? Did he realise that this was the basis? of something great. I think the proof of the pudding, you know,

since it became his most famous work. Yes, I mean, do we think he did it justice? Yes, we do. Not everybody did. In fact, Jennings was a bit cross about some of it. We don't know precisely what. He did say that he objected to the overture. We don't know why.

And in fact, the overture is a stroke of genius harmonically in the whole scheme, harmonic scheme. But, you know, Handel came back to it again and again. and I don't think that was just a financial thing. And it was an artistic issue that he came back at it again and again, presumably. Artistic and artistic and pragmatic nearly always go together. I mean, you could say that with works that actually failed when he first did them and he came back to, as is said about one of his late operas, that he kept working at having to put on one side coming back to,

why in the end, especially as it's not very popular now, did he come back to it, we might work out that he really had a fondness for some of it. But, I mean, Don can tell us about how many different versions handled it. He must have been interested in this work to keep redoing it in different forms. We've spoken about the singers, but what about the orchestra? What about the orchestration of this piece which he kept revising? I think there's a little prelude to that. I mean, I think that the situation was once Messiah was established,

it got a regular slot in Handel's program. He performed oratorios during the Lenton period and Messiah was always the last one before Easter. It had a particular place in the programme. Which was what Jennings intended, if I might interrupt. I mean, Jennings specifically said this was for Handel to perform in Passion Tide. And he always did. Larry, nowadays we associate Handel's Messiah more with Christmas.

In fact, I think it vise with Maria Carey for being the most played piece over the Christmas period. What's the connection with Christmas? I'm trying to remember, Donald, can you tell us, when it started to become associated with Christmas? Dublin. Oh, Dublin? Dublin. I, from the beginning. Not quite. After Handler had gone back to London.

The person we referred to earlier, Matthew Duborg, the violinist, He lived sort of half the year in London and half the year in Dublin. And he was taking over charity performances. There were three charities in Dublin. And in fact, what happened was that for the relief of debtors, that charity, they regularly performed Messiah in December. That is how it became associated first with that season. But obviously there were things in it that elsewhere people also.

So, yeah, good idea. You know, it was taken up elsewhere. And I think certainly the first part of Messiah is kind of the Christmassy part, which is why it's become, you know, it's the shepherds. There's very comforting pastoral music, and that's the kind of favorite first part. So for many people, it's become a Christmas piece and kind of a bit of pablum that you can kind of just enjoy in Christmas.

But in fact, as we know, parts two and three, there's an apocalyptic bit at the end. And there's a message in the Messiah, which is potentially very unsettling and very provocative. It is the crooked being made straight. You're comforting people who are in pain, your communities. And this can become a message to certain communities of liberation and of comfort and comforting my people. And you go out and do the comforting. Not feel comfortable, right?

Comfort, my people, Isaiah, you comfort my people. don't feel comfortable. So it's not a comfortable peace. It is a call to bring comfort to others. Ruth. This is such a generous work. And it doesn't exclude people by being very focused on doctrine. You know, the difficult issue of the Trinity isn't there.

Hell isn't there. The threatening parts of Christianity aren't there. There's no villain, is there really? There's no villain. There's no Satan. I'm going to say, does the devil pop up? He doesn't really. No, he popped up in Handel's first oratorio about salvation by Christ, which was Larisoracioni in Italy.

And this is a point perhaps to mention that whereas most people would have found Messiah unique and unprecedented, it wouldn't have been for Jennings because he knew that Handel had composed an oratorio about salvation through Christ for the Catholic community of Italy, that he had composed a passion oratorio for his own home Lutheran community in Germany. And now Jennings would have thought, surely it's time that the greatest composer on earth composed an oratorio about salvation for us all for the Anglican community of England.

And Ruth, to finish up, can you tell me, do you think it's ultimately redemptive, A, and B, what is its lasting appeal? Because it's a remarkable piece of work. I think if you're Christian, it's redemptive. But it's interesting that people, who aren't Christian find it uplifting, warming, encouraging, joyful. Which maybe answers the second part of my question.

Well, but why? I mean, the interesting part of that question, yes, I mean, it continues to be welcomed by people all over the world, people in countries which are not Christian at all, far flung. Jennings would be so pleased that their word has gone forth unto the ends of the world that the propagation of the gospel is one of the quote, evidences of Christianity, which Jennings is careful to include. And look, it's happened with Messiah. It all fits so neatly. The question, I suppose, can be put in terms of how was Jennings composing his libretto to match Handel's strengths as a composer to make Handel right at the top of his game? And, you know, we could talk for an hour at least just about that.

But I think one way in which it succeeds is that it's not a narrative, it's not a story, It's not the life of Christ. It's a statement of faith, and it's very elusive because it uses the Old Testament a lot rather than the gospel narrative. So the suffering servant prophet in the Old Testament is used for the elusive account of Christ's career. But this leaves it so open for Handel to write emotive music for all the strong emotional directives in the work, rejoice, he was despised. These are as much emotional statements or directives as they are statements of faith. Larry. And I think finally I just wanted to say, right as we're recording these messages of your warfare is accomplished, why do the nation so furiously rage together?

There's always something in the Messiah which you can connect to contemporary events. My thanks to Ruth Smith, Donald Burroughs and Larry Zazzo. Next week, mathematics and the impossible perspectives of M.C. Escher. Thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Misha and his guests. Now we're talking on our podcast bit now where we can all start complaining about the bits we missed out. Donald. Well, no, just to pick that up, I mean, there is a tease about this. there's no certainty that anything in Messiah was written for Mrs. Sibber. If you go back to the time it's written, we don't know what Handel was thinking about his future.

But I think we know he was writing for a less skilled singer. No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't, it sort of doesn't make sense because here's him probably saying, hmm, not opera perhaps, I'm going somewhere else. but he writes Messiah first, which is for four voices, it looks as if he's not thinking of any particular singer.

And what's really odd about it is it's a very mobile work because it's just strings, trumpets and drums. The normal cues for oboes to take part, the larger thing, you don't need a separate stay for oboes. The normal thing that he does in operas and oratorios is in some places he writes

Senza obo and then Tutti Forte. There's none of that in Messiah. He doesn't register anything apart from the strings. And this looks like this is a as it were, mobile work that you can take anywhere. But then the whole argument is then screwed up because after it he writes Samson. Now Samson is a London work

that needs London-type soloist and heaven help us, it's got trombones in the orchestra. You know, you won't find them in Dublin. And he wrote that second, you know, so what on earth was he thinking during that summer period? But when he was writing these works, is he thinking Dublin, London, well, I've got something for both,

you know, because in the seasons after this, when he's regularly in London, we have a pattern, which is what we get in 41, is that he uses the summer, autumn, to write two new works for the next season. That's what he's done. They're just very different from each other. I mean, what obviously made sense in the 1740s,

you talk about August, September, you're living in Brook Street, the streets are quiet because everyone's off at their country houses. You know, you can have a quiet time, you can concentrate on writing the music. And that pattern is there with 17th, but it doesn't quite make sense because half of it looks like

this is something I might take. Had he had the invitation to Dublin at that stage, this is where I think Matthew Du Borg, the violinist. He's the violinist in Dublin. He lives half the time in London and half the time in Dublin. He has to go to Dublin because he's master of the state music so he has to write the ode for the King's birthday

that's done at Dublin Castle. So he's there basically during late autumn winter, but he's in London for other times of the year. And it's almost certainly, it seems to me, that he must have had these conversations with Handel about Dublin. And it's a different setup. Because what does Handel say about the venue? The music sounds great in this charming room.

It isn't a theatre. You know, it's a completely different sort of, ambience of a concert hall. That's what he finds when he gets there. How much did he know about it in the first place? You know, what was he thinking when he was writing, besides, very difficult. I mean, it may be worth saying that we are stymied in some of our conjectures about Handel

and that we have hardly any letters from him compared with, say, Mozart. And I think we have fewer than 50 letters. Do we know why that is? Is that because he just didn't write that? Perhaps they won't get, or whatever. Better things to do. But as it happens, what we have is too excellent letters to Jenens. Yes, once he's there.

But we don't have anything saying, I've decided to go to Dublin on the X of X because I've got these two works. And, I mean, it's worth saying that, following on from what Don's saying about him, having two completely different works on the stocks, and then he takes Hussar to Dublin, we should remember that he, as we've already said, he does two complete concert seasons, two times six works before he does Messiah.

And Messiah could have been a speculative thing. I know I've tried and tested these other works. Let's see how they go down in the concert series. If they go really well, I'll do Messiah as a standalone thing, which is what happens. But, you know, had there been trouble about getting sufficient choir and so on, he would already have done these other works and could then go home much richer than when he came to Ireland. And I think it's worth saying going back to this question, why is Messiah so popular? There's a practical reason. Handel had at least 10 versions of Messiah.

I was going to say, when did that happen? Almost immediately he was... Well, I suppose year on year, right? Well, no, I mean, he has to... He has to, first of all, adapt to this business of having Cathedral Choir singers. Of different spaces and different... So that therefore, thou shalt break them, turns into a vegetative, because he doesn't have a good enough singer to to do that all. So some of them are practical, some of them are stimulated by a new singer. You

can't go too far with this because the overall shape of the work doesn't change. You know, what he's doing is slotting in different things, in different places. There's one area which does go different, how beautiful are the feet? Which is very complicated because as done by

Jennings in the Libretto is how beautiful are the feet of them, referring back to the chorus, because it's referring to the company of the preachers, going out, how beautiful are the feet of them? And I think in Dublin, someone said to him, you know, that bit of Isaiah, you could use how beautiful are the feet of him to refer to Messiah. And so what he does in Dublin is to set a subtly different text, how beautiful are the feet of him.

And I think that's one of the things that Jennings doesn't like. He said, that's not what I meant. I mean, Handel, I think, was a very practical composer. He was always responding to the singers he had, to the forces he had. I've done Messiah at least over 100 performances, and I don't think I've ever done it

in exactly the same version. Every conductor, especially in part three, how long or not to make it. You can make it shorter. you can make it longer, depending on the singers you have and what you like about certain movements. There's certain movements that were written for soprano, but also were performed for alto. I've done a two alto version of He Shall Feed His Flock, which is very, very beautiful, but very rare. And that adaptability also in terms of forces, and we didn't really talk about the 19th century,

where you had these mega messias, messias on steroids with, you know, hundreds in the choir. And they got bigger and bigger, bigger. and then with the historical performance movement, we've done it with very small forces. I've done it both ways, and it's exciting in both ways. It's sublime in both cases. You also mentioned the Winter Marsalis saying that he didn't want to desecrate the work, and you briefly referred to the Quincy Jones' soulful celebration.

I listened to that in preparation for the program. I have to say it's a spectacular piece of work, because there seems to be a communality between, what Handel was trying to do and the tradition of gospel in particular, but also preaching. I think let's go back to comfort, right? This is a message of comfort to a community,

a formerly enslaved community. We're talking about the Israelites here, and this is a very powerful message to communities of color, especially formerly enslaved communities. And interesting thing, Mervyn Warren said, who was one of the main arrangements,

He said, we hear Messiah and it's lofty and regal and elegant, but Handel was scorned in his day. That's really interesting. And we think of Handel as being this absolute rock star, but he did have some pretty rocky stages in his career. And right when he was composing Messiah was potentially one of his very low points. And certainly in the mythology about Handel, it becomes absolutely, as you say, rock bottom for Handel.

And, you know, he's ill, wrong. He's broke, scorn. And, you know, he goes without food for the three weeks that he's composing it. You know, that's the myth. And it's very attractive one. Because I read the Stefan Schweig. There you go. That's exactly the source.

And that was, he was ill. He was broke. The people were chasing him at the door for his debts. But that narrative is very powerful for people, isn't it? Yeah, it is. But also, I think that if people don't know the work, you get this myth that it might end with the Hallelujah Chorus. It's true.

It doesn't, you know. And in many ways, in terms of composition, the best arias are in part three. Well, certainly I know that my deem or live, if you're missing out on something. And also, if God be for us, which often is, if you look at the actual musical composition, what he's writing is an extremely good piece.

He actually takes, as it were, well, actually, both of those are interesting because whereas the operatic, dark arras a, B, you know, as he's working from biblical texts, the two big arias there are three verse texts. They're in three sections. And everyone moves on from the previous verse. You know, that's something I think that doesn't happen in any of the other arias. There's something different. But on the Hallelujah chorus, presumably the reason why that has become so popular is it's a big old sing-along. And

And, you know, people do feel uplifted by that communal experience. Yeah. Perhaps it's worth going in here that the FlashMob Hallelujah choruses. Do we know what FlashMob choruses are? Flashmobs are choruses that appear apparently spontaneously in big squares. Exactly. In shopping malls. Yes, yes.

But there are hundreds of iPhones filming the whole thing. So if you look on YouTube at FlashMob, Hallelujah Choruses, and count up the number. of views that the main ones have had, it comes to over 70 million, which is more than the population of Britain. Time for a cup of tea. In our time with Misha Gleney

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