Famous Opening Nights & The World Around Their Creation: ‘Messiah’
‘Messiah’, 13th April 1742, Dublin
Few people in the audience that day in Dublin could have imagined they were present at one of the most thrilling events in musical history, the first outing of a masterpiece that would still be exciting and moving audiences nearly three centuries later. Georg Friederich Handel had been born in Halle in Saxony in 1685 and had become one of the world’s most famous men by the time he decided to write an oratorio on the life and influence of Jesus Christ, the Messiah! He had collaborated with the librettist Charles Jennens on a previous project, the oratorio ‘Saul’, which had proved very popular, and when he received a copy of Jennens’ script about the Messiah, he seems to have set to work with gusto.
Handel had taken up permanent residence in England in 1712 and had become immensely popular with the public and the court, writing many instrumental pieces and several Italian operas. In 1723, he was appointed Composer for the Chapel Royal, to King George I, but it transpired that no foreigner could teach at this level of society (although, of course, the King was German, and spoke English only haltingly!), and so he became a naturalised British citizen after the passing of the Naturalisation Act in 1727, an act designed exclusively for him and a couple of other Germans. Around 1715, he began to use the English spelling, Handel, and in 1727 the same year as his naturalisation, he wrote the coronation anthem, ‘Zadok the Priest’, for the coronation of George II, an anthem which has been sung at every British coronation since then! It was the first piece of Handel’s music I ever heard or sang, as it was one of the standard works for our school choir in Edinburgh. The magnificent opening orchestral movement still evokes great memories for me, and the entry of the choir with “Zadok the Priest, and Nathan the prophet, anointed Solomon, King!” still sends tingles through my spine, although I am now used to it being played a bit better than the George Watson’s school orchestra could manage!
When the Duke of Devonshire, in his other guise as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, invited Handel to play a series of concerts in Dublin in the winter of 1741/2, the composer decided to try out his new oratorio, ‘Messiah’. He had composed his last opera ‘Deidamia’ in 1741, which I must say, I have never heard, and he abandoned the genre after this. Consequently, a lot was at stake for the new oratorio, although the experiment of making its first performance in Dublin suggests unusual circumspection on Handel’s part. Dublin in 1742, although much more cosmopolitan than the rest of Ireland, was still some way from the great cities of Europe, and Handel must have looked to test the waters there rather than perform in full glare in London, where it was eventually performed to a modest reception the following year. Jennens presented Handel with the libretto for ‘Messiah’ sometime after 10th July 1741, and it was finished by 14th September, an astonishing feat which demonstrates the composer’s commitment to the work. It was designed in 3 parts – The Prophesy, and the Birth of the Messiah, his Passion, and his Resurrection. It seems that Jennens was both a devout Christian and an opponent of the Hanoverian succession and opinions have varied over the years about his importance to Handel’s composition. There can be little doubt that the libretto is a masterpiece of construction, and by the time the definitive version appeared later in Handel’s life, after many revisions and additions, it was revealed as one of the great works of Western music. I have only sung complete versions twice in my career, and, although it necessitates a very long evening, it benefits enormously from having all the parts fitting smoothly together. The more normal, cut version is satisfying musically, but much disrupted in terms of continuity and comprehension. I will look at the piece itself later, but for now let’s turn our attention to the state of the world on 13th April 1742.
Ireland had experienced a severe winter in 1739/40, a great freeze that destroyed crops and killed many. There was a famine that summer, and the following winter proved almost as bad. By 1741, almost the whole country had been subjected to another famine, and following hard on its heels, came disease. A poor country, deeply Catholic in outlook, and full of malnourished children, run like a colony from England, it seems an unlikely setting for one of the world’s great works of art, but by the spring of 1742 it was recovering slightly from the worst effects of the freeze and famine. Dublin must have been a haven of light in an otherwise grim place, but one wonders what Handel made of it all?
Great Britain was still a much-divided place after the arrival of the Hanoverian monarchy, hot on the heels of the Treaty of Union in 1707, which had created a United Kingdom of Scotland and England, with Wales tacked on. Wales was a poor place with inhabitants who spoke very little English, but Scotland, despite the Act of Union, had preserved many of its old institutions (as it still does!), and was preparing to flex its muscles in the Jacobite cause in 1745. Robert Walpole had been de facto Prime Minister since 1721 but had recently resigned and moved to the House of Lords as the Earl of Orford. The whole country was in some confusion, despite Walpole’s success in helping the recovery from the South Sea Bubble, and his policies had largely kept Britain out of the various European wars of the time and had established the Hanoverian succession. However, Britain had been forced to commit itself to the War of the Spanish Succession, if only in part, which saw the rise of Prussia to a position of dominance, with Britain as a major ally.
What is often forgotten in histories of the time was the crucial part played by the English Channel in keeping Britain, to a large extent, free from the interminable wars which raged across Europe for centuries. Never invaded since 1066, the country had benefited enormously from immunity from incessant fighting. Scotland and England made up a bit for this lack, and the astonishing march south by Prince Charles Edward Stuart in December 1745, after the Jacobite victory at Prestonpans in September of that year, must have suddenly felt very menacing. Handel, with his close relationship with George II, must have been extremely concerned at the idea of all these rough Highlanders attacking London. Most of Britain’s standing army at the time was involved in fighting in Flanders and Germany, and Charles almost sneaked into power. However, the British state woke up just in time, and, as we all know, the Duke of Cumberland (George II’s second son), punished the Jacobites for their decision to retreat back to Scotland by following them and inflicting a crushing defeat at Culloden in April 1746. All this was in the future when Handel introduced ‘Messiah’ to the world in April 1742, but the context of the time is important.
In Europe, much was changing. Frederick II of Prussia (later to be known as ‘The Great’) had ascended to the throne in May 1740, and only a few months later, in October, Charles VI, the Habsburg ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, died. Frederick refused to accept an earlier settlement by which Charles’ daughter Maria Theresa would succeed to his throne, and thus began the War of the Austrian Succession, which would, in turn, lead on to the Seven Years War. These conflicts were largely fought between sets of professional armies, keeping civilian casualties to a minimum, and without many of the atrocities associated with earlier and later campaigns, but nonetheless, the concept of great numbers of heavily armed men tramping around Europe must have been ghastly and terrifying. I won’t even begin to unravel what went on during these wars, but Handel, apart from the little matter of the Jacobites, must have been relieved not to be employed by European monarchs, demanding culture while beating the hell out of their neighbours!
These conflicts inevitably spilled over into the colonial possessions of the European powers. A month after ‘Messiah’ was heard in Dublin, Spanish power in Peru was threatened by a rebellion led by a certain Juan Carlos, an indigenous figure who claimed to be the re-incarnation of the Inca King Atahualpa. Missionaries were killed and Spanish settlements were attacked in an attempt to drive the Spanish colonialists out of the high jungles and mountains of Peru. Eventually unsuccessful, it seems to have been one of the first uprisings of people native to a region, searching for their own identity and independence. In Canada and America, the French and the British continued to contest their European rivalries far from home, and both countries were aided by their own allies among the indigenous tribes. The period around the premiere of ‘Messiah’ saw a temporary lull in hostilities, as colonialists jockeyed for position. As the British became stronger in Canada, their superior sea power proving crucial, so their position in America weakened, eventually leading to British control over Canada (including Québec, although retaining its Francophone nature), but also to the success of the American Revolutionary War and Independence from Britain.
Further afield, Nader Shah of Persia was about to declare war on the Ottoman Empire, ruled from Constantinople, a conflict that ended in something of a stalemate, at which point Persia decided to attack the Moghul Empire in India.
In China, the Qing Dynasty had been established in 1636, and ruled throughout our period. 1742 was an important year in Japan, as the Kujikata Osadamegaki was enacted that year by Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune. It was a rulebook for Japanese judicial bureaucrats, detailing the appropriate judgements and punishments to be used in the jurisdictions of the Daimyo, the feudal lords who controlled most of Japanese life.
In Russia, a couple of weeks after ‘Messiah’, Elizabeth, second-eldest daughter of Peter the Great, became Empress of All Russia, after taking power with the help of the military, and imprisoning the infant Tsar Ivan VI. She ruled, with a certain amount of success, for twenty years, negotiating European wars with keen judgement and diplomatic tact, making important educational reforms, and engaging in magnificent construction projects like the Winter Palace and Smolny Cathedral in St Petersburg.
France was experiencing great changes. Louis XV’s Prime Minister, Cardinal de Fleury, and the de facto ruler, was to die the following year, and Louis would take over sole control. The War of the Austrian Succession was costly and not very successful for France, and soon, the whole Jacobite problem flared up. France was supposed to support the rebellion, as it opposed the Hanoverian King George II, but proved less helpful than expected. The sequence of events leading up to the French Revolution, and the execution of Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, were soon to occur.
As we can see, the world at the time of ‘Messiah’s’ first performance was complicated, and it is impossible now for us to comprehend how much ordinary people knew or cared about the politics and wars of their “superiors”? Life now is so dependent on 24-hour news, and on explanations of what is going on, that the concept of the vast majority of the population having not the slightest idea of contemporary affairs outside their small locality is really hard to grasp. That the first solution to any problem was to declare war and send off a bunch of soldiers to foreign parts seems incredible!
Returning to ‘Messiah’, what is it that makes this particular work so great and so important? I don’t think those people gathered in the Great Music Hall in Fishamble Street in Dublin to hear a charity concert arranged by Handel could have had any idea what they were about to hear. 16 men and 16 boys from St Patrick’s and Christ Church Cathedrals were engaged to sing, along with Christina Maria Avoglio and Susanna Cibber. Avoglio was probably German, married to an Italian, and had been used as a soloist by Handel since 1740, while Mrs Cibber had been a favourite singer of Handel since 1733. He wrote several parts for her unusually low female voice, and this explains the true contralto nature of the alto solos in ‘Messiah’, which often prove difficult for modern mezzo sopranos. She was acclaimed as a great actress, as well as a singer, and was, interestingly, the sister of the composer, Thomas Arne, famous for ‘Rule Britannia’, who, indeed, accompanied her to Dublin, and was probably in the audience. The male solos were sung by members of the choir, who must have been exceptionally fine singers, as they are extremely difficult technically. I always come out of a performance of ‘Messiah’ exhilarated but exhausted, especially if sung at modern pitch, a semitone higher than Handel’s original. On the very few occasions I have been asked to sing ‘The Trumpet shall Sound’ in its full Da Capo version (the whole first section, a B section - “For this corruptible must put on incorruption” and then the first section again, with ornaments), I have been almost on my knees at the end! It is also immensely long at the end of a very long night! The added problem of Handel failing to understand the pronunciation of some of Jennen’s text, and setting some of the words completely wrong, contributes to the stress. The modern habit of playing Handel very fast is another consideration. My recording of “Why do the Nations?” on the Deutsche Grammophon ‘Messiah’, conducted by Marc Minkowski, is the fastest on record and I have no recollection of how I sang it. It’s very exciting!
It was fascinating to perform the piece in Grenoble and Paris, and then record it in a subterranean studio in the Opera de Bastille, with Minkowski. He is a French bassoonist, turned conductor, and so had no experience of the British tradition of performing ‘Messiah’, resulting in a mercurial recording which was not completely successful, but is nonetheless worth hearing. He used several soloists for the different arias and recitatives, as the recording was for a soundtrack of a film, ‘Messiah’, by William Klein, a quirky New York photographer and film maker, whose other works include ‘Muhammed Ali, the Greatest’ and ‘The Little Richard Story’! I kid you not!
There are so many different ways to perform ‘Messiah’, which illustrate its ubiquity and greatness. From local choral society Christmas concerts, the first in St Andrews in 1973, through international performances at great venues, through a complete version in Tewkesbury Abbey, lasting four hours, through a wonderful full performance in The Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh with the Dunedin consort, to a rowdy performance in The Hackney Empire, with a busy bar at the back and encores for the’ Hallelujah Chorus’ and ‘the Trumpet shall Sound’, I can safely say ‘Messiah’ has been at the heart of my career for nearly 50 years. Little did those six hundred members of the audience in Fishamble Street in 1742 know what they were witnessing!
