As Sir Newman Flower, one of Handel’s biographers rightly noted: “It is questionable whether any music, composed in England or imported into it, has reached the heart of the people so truly as Handel’s.” The most remembered work of Handel is his oratorio Messiah – the single work that made him a household name. Paul Henry Lang, in his exhaustive study of the composer writes, “Messiah is perhaps the only major work about which public sentiment is unanimous. Its freshness, its warmth, its beautifully rounded forms and sculptured melodies offer universal experience to men of all walks of life and all shades of faith. Handel achieved with this work the most widespread critical recognition ever accorded a composer, for among his acclaimers are not only every English-speaking church congregation, small or large, but also Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms and every musician who ever tried his hand at choral writing.”
Handel composed music in almost every form known in his day: oratorios, operas, harpsichord music, organ concertos, masques, church works, anthems, concerti grossi, orchestral suites, etc. Musicologists have explored this wealth of musical compositions and prepared editions of many of Handel’s compositions in order that these can be performed in the most authentic way, the manner in which they were originally written. Only during the twentieth century that the world came to know the full range of his works. This is due to the extensive research and series of studies. For the general public, Handel’s Messiah remains to be an epic
creation of its kind.
The popularity of Messiah began in London in 1749 when Handel led a benefit performance for the Foundling Hospital. This was its premier performance, and for the next nine years that followed, Handel conducted the oratorio annually. Since that time, its universal popularity has hardly wavered, for it is music of strength, sincerity, religious passion and meaning, set down with the greatest skill for chorus and soloists. Handel cast it in three parts, the first telling of the prophecy of the Messiah’s coming, the second relating the suffering and death of Christ, and the third describing the resurrection of the son of God. Jennens, the compiler of the libretto, sent a text to be printed at the head of the oratorio, summing up its spirit: “And without controversy, great is the mystery of Godliness; God was manifested in the Flesh, justified by the Spirit, seen of Angels, preached among the Gentiles, gave man belief in the world, and was received up in Glory. In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
