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Getting a Handle on Handel 

George Frideric Handel was a failure. Bankrupted, in great physical pain, and the victim of plots to sabotage his career, the once-great opera composer scheduled a “farewell” appearance in London in April 1741. To the London elite, it looked like this “German nincompoop”, as he was once called, was through. That summer, however, he composed Messiah, which not only brought him back into the spotlight but is still deemed by some to be “an epitome of Christian faith.” This week marks the 240^th anniversary of Handel’s death and the 257^th anniversary of the premiere of that great masterpiece.  Discouragement came early. His father wanted him to be a lawyer, not a musician. Even after he was able to take up a prodigious musical career (becoming the composer for England’s Chapel Royal), he preferred the out-of-fashion operas to the more popular music of the day—which often mean playing to empty halls. (Never mind, he joked, an empty venue would mean great acoustics.)

He didn’t joke for long. In 1737 Handel’s opera company went bankrupt, and he suffered what seems to be a mild stroke. But to make matters worse, his latest musical fascination—the oratorio (a composition for orchestra and voices telling a sacred story without costumes, scenery, or dramatic action)--was his most controversial yet. His first oratorio (actually, the first of its kind in English), Esther, was met with outrage by the church.  A Bible story was being told by “common mummers,” and even worse, the words of God were being spoken in the theater!

In 1739, advertisements for Israel in Egypt were torn down by devout Christians, who also disrupted its performances. All of this angered the devoutly Lutheran Handel. As his friend Sir John Hawkins commented, “Throughout his life, [he] manifested a deep sense of religion. In conversation he would frequently declare the pleasure he felt in setting the Scriptures to music, and how contemplating the many sublime passages in the Psalms had contributed to his edification.”

Deeply depressed and now threatened with debtor’s prison, Handel was visited by his Anglican friend Charles Jennens, who had written a libretto about the life of Christ with the text completely taken from the Bible. Would Handel compose the music for it? he asked. Handel answered that he would and estimated its completion in a year.

Handel began composing Messiah on August 22, 1741, and worked like a man obsessed. He rarely left his room and rarely touched his meals. But in 24 days he had composed 260 pages—an immense physical feat. When he finished writing what would become known as the Hallelujah Chorus, he said, “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God himself.” Though the performance of the piece again caused controversy (Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels and then the dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, was outraged and initially refused to allow his musicians to participate), the premiere, a benefit performance on April 13, 1742, at Dublin’s Fishamble Street Musick Hall, was a sensation.  Still it took nearly a year for Messiah to be invited to London. Religious controversy surrounded it there, too, and Handel compromised a bit by dropping the “blasphemous” title from handbills. It was instead called “A New Sacred Oratorio.” But the controversy wasn’t strong enough to keep away the king, who stood instantly at the opening notes of the Hallelujah Chorus (though some historians have suggested it was because he was partially deaf and mistook it for the national anthem), a tradition ever since.  Though it had met rave reviews in Dublin (“the most finished piece of music”), it was not very popular in London after its premiere. By 1745 Handel was again playing to empty houses and nearing poverty. Not until his oratorio Judas Maccabeus, which was misunderstood by the English as a veiled nationalistic anthem, did Handel (and with him Messiah) reach the pinnacle of his career.

Until his death, Handel conducted 30 performances of Messiah (none at Christmastime, for Handel deemed it a Lenten piece), only one of which was in a church, Bristol Cathedral. In that audience sat John Wesley. “I doubt if that congregation was ever so serious at a sermon as they were during this performance,” the founder of Methodism remarked. 

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