#Handel messiah hallelujah chorus instrumental professional
You can almost certainly sing it! Amateur choirs and choral societies all over the world perform Handel’s Messiah at Christmas and Easter, sometimes with the help of professional orchestras and sometimes on a “scratch” basis, where you can turn up in the morning and sing the piece in the evening even if you’ve never opened the score before. Performing the piece around Yuletide became a national obsession in Britain in the Victorian era – although it actually contains more references to Easter than Christmas – and that obsession has never quite abated. You might also have heard bits of Handel’s Messiah ringing out from churches, concert halls or radios around Christmas and Easter, particularly the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus and ‘For Unto Us A Child Is Born’. You must have heard the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus, right? That’s the piece that ends Part II (the crucifixion/redemption chapter of Messiah) but it pops up everywhere from The X Factor to Bridget Jones’s Diary and Dumb And Dumber. While writing the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus Handel’s servant discovered him with tears in his eyes and he exclaimed, “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself seated on His throne, with His company of Angels.” Handel composed Messiah in just 24 days without getting much sleep and or eating much food. He used all his old tricks and learnt some new (pretty good) ones too. Those forces deliver some of Handel’s most heart-stopping music – gobsmackingly dramatic and effective, profoundly touching and spiritual. In each of these three parts, the chorus is absolutely at the heart of the work, complemented by four vocal soloists and an orchestra. He created a piece based on three concepts: the story of the nativity and its prophecy that of the crucifixion and redemption of mankind and a commentary on the Christian soul and its victory over death. Handel deliberately kept the dramatic content of his Messiah understated – it was in church after all. The Bishop of London had forbidden performances of works with religious overtones on London stages so Handel decided to write a work for concert performance in a church. Italian opera was losing popularity fast, but the public still loved a good biblical story. Messiah was born when Handel’s experimental nature was confronted with the fickle, changing tastes of London audiences and the politics of the English church. And for Handel, all that ambiguity proved rather convenient … It pretty much coined a new genre – part German Passion, part English church anthem, part Italian opera. Messiah didn’t have anything like the kind of plot Handel’s audiences were used to in his operas or even his biblical oratorios. That’s how Handel named this masterpiece for chorus, orchestra and vocal soloists, and the ‘floating’, abstract nature of the title says a thing or two about Handel’s equally floating, abstract concept. Messiah: The Story Behind Handel’s Masterpiece Why the name?įirst things first: Messiah or The Messiah? Not wanting to be pedantic it’s absolutely the first – Messiah – without the definite article.
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