Into the Score: Handel’s Messiah

Music for our moment: the malleability of Messiah

The familiarity and ubiquity of this great oratorio disguise the spectacular variety of musical expression it has been engendering for centuries. We might think “I know Messiah.” But which Messiah, exactly, is it that you know?

There is no definitive Messiah. With almost each performance Handel himself gave of the work, he added, transposed, adapted, and made substitutions in the solo arias to suit the singers he had booked for the performance. Nowadays, even singers in ensembles that perform the work every year are treated to a rotating cast of soloists. Will the alto solos be performed by a mezzo-soprano, contralto, or countertenor? Who gets to sing Refiner’s Fire—alto or bass? (For a fascinating example of just such solo substitutions, CLICK HERE to watch a full performance of Messiah by the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, wherein solos typically sung by sopranos and altos are sung by tenors and basses, and vice versa). Then there’s the matter of the choruses. To cut or not to cut? Dare we cut anything from Part I? What is the impact of cutting several choruses from Part III?

But beyond those personnel and structural decisions are a host of other decisions that any conductor approaching this work has to make. Admittedly, it’s difficult to go “into the score” because that score is merely the foundation for any performance of Messiah. So much of what makes Messiah great isn’t notated. Unlike, say, a choral-orchestral work from the twentieth or twenty-first century, whose definitive, edited scores come with descriptive tempo indications, specific metronome markings, predetermined instrumentation, not to mention dynamics, crescendos and decrescendos, expressive markings, accents, staccatos, etc. etc. etc. (for reference, take a peek at the score of a Mahler symphony), a Messiah score has, essentially, the pitches, rhythm, and a simple tempo designation, such as grave or allegro which, in Handel’s time, had as much to do with character as they did with tempo. This, for me, is where things start to get interesting. Not just the who and what, but the how. Messiah leaves so much of the “how” up to us.

Let’s start with the who. Beyond assigning soloists, one has to decide how many singers and players will be involved. Though we don’t have records of the precise size of Handel’s choruses and orchestras for all of the performances of Messiah he oversaw while alive, we do have some, and they were, generally, on what would today be considered the lean side of things. Yet the skeleton that Handel created can bear the weight of bigger forces. Indeed, throughout the nineteenth century, commemorative celebrations of Handel featured Messiah performances of gargantuan proportions, some with thousands of players and singers. Mozart and other composers and arrangers scored parts for additional flutes, horns, and other instruments. What is gained or lost by amassing these forces? Nowadays, many ensembles perform Messiah using historical instruments: violins with gut strings set at a different tension, played with differently shaped bows; oboes and bassoons with fewer keys and slightly differently shaped reeds; timpani with skin drumheads and simpler mallets. What is gained or lost using historical instruments?

And how about those notes and rhythms? In What Makes It Great, Rob Kapilow re-composes Messiah, dissecting Handel’s decisions about which notes to lengthen and shorten, which rhythms to dot, and reveals the impact of those decisions on the stickiness of the musical ideas. To be sure, the ink Handel actually put on paper provides the ingredients for memorable music. In recent decades, our understanding of the performance practices of Handel’s time has led performers both to adjust some of the rhythms by “overdotting” dotted figures and to adorn other melodic passages with a variety of agréments—trills, mordents, and the like. Note, on the page from the manuscript on the left, the Overture, Handel doesn’t indicate trills, dynamics, or a metronome mark, and most of the dotted rhythms are dotted quarter notes followed by eighths. Note, too, that there is no separate part for bassoon, or harpsichord. Should we have one bassoon? Two? How elaborately ought the harpsichordist roll her chords? The music doesn’t specify. Knowledge of the Baroque dance forms with which Handel would have been familiar might also lead us to emphasize, stretch, or shorten this or that beat or upbeat. How does the inclusion of these musical “extras”—separate and apart from the actual notes on the page—influence our understanding of the story being told?

Let’s have a listen to six renditions of the first section of Messiah’s Overture. Each was recorded by a well-known conductor and ensemble. Consider how the different conductors/ensembles treat the long versus short notes. Are the long ones held for their full value, leaving no gap before the short ones, or is there a gap? Is the short note (an eighth in the score) exactly half the length of the long, or has it been shortened further? Do the long and short notes get equal weight? What is the tempo (if it’s even discernible!)? To which of these do your find yourself tapping your toes? Do you hear trills? Where? How many? What is their character? Is there variation in the dynamics?

More interesting to me than these musical decisions are their impacts, the way they combine to create a pervading atmosphere or affekt. Which rendition seems to draw open the proverbial curtain, set a scene, grab our attention, and make us eager to hear the story that’s about to unfold? What type of story does each of these make you think is about to unfold? Epic and tragic? Wry and comic? Who do you imagine to be the protagonist of this story? Someone humble, meek, human, or mighty, regal, even godly?

Examples 1, 3, and 5 were recorded on modern instruments; 2, 4, and 6 on historical instruments. Listen to each, 1-6. Try 1 vs. 2, 3 vs. 4, 5. vs. 6. Then consider 1, 3, and 5; 2, 4 and 6. (Scroll down to the bottom of the page for a key to the artists).

Or consider these two versions of the first chorus, “And the Glory of the Lord Shall Be Revealed.” Again, consider tempo, the varying of weight among the three beats in a measure, long versus short articulations, size and makeup of chorus, etc. What is the effect of the combination of these musical decisions? Does the message of the libretto feel revelatory and astonishing? Proclamatory and portentous?

“The subject excels all other subjects:” a Libretto for All

The grandeur of Handel’s music likely arose in part from his awareness of the import of the subject matter. Messiah can be heard through an explicitly Christian framework to great satisfaction. The texts that Handel’s librettist Charles Jennens drew together from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament encapsulate the essence of the Christian faith. Jennens recognized that he and Handel were taking on not a historical biblical figure but the figure. Jennens hoped that “the Composition may excel all [Handel’s] former compositions, as the Subject excels every other subject. The Subject is Messiah.” The title itself betrays the importance with which Jennens regarded this endeavor and the significance given its subject. The oratorio is not titled after its subject’s name, “Jesus Christ,” the way so many of Handel’s other oratorios are (Deborah, Samson, Saul, Solomon, Esther), but after its subject’s purpose and potential.

And yet, Jennens’ approaching the story of Christ with an eye to big ideas and ultimate significance ensured greater universality of message. He presents Christ’s birth, suffering, resurrection, and triumph in heaven one step removed from the action, as the fulfillment of prophecies from the Old Testament rather direct retellings of the events chronicled in the New. For example, unlike Bach’s passions, in which Jesus and Pilate sing, as themselves, and an evangelist recounts directly the gospels’ narrative prose, the so-called “passion” section of Messiah offers a third person view more evocative than explicit, using texts (with the exception of one verse from the Gospel of John) not from the gospel accounts but from the Old Testament, namely the prophecies of Isaiah, and the Psalms. Only for a few moments in Part I of Messiah do we get a narrative series of events: the angels and shepherds at the manger, drawn from the Gospel of Luke. Any dramatic thrust felt in Messiah is not the result of our identifying with a named character relaying a narrative in first person but the consequence of the reflection required by Jennens’ making us read (or hear) between the lines. His selection of passages turns our focus from the details of the story itself to its broader themes. The highs and lows of this most famous of stories are relayed to “us all,” amplified and broadened by Handel’s musical treatment. Together, Jennens and Handel have opened the central story of Christianity to all lives. Expectation and fulfillment, suffering and triumph, assurance and joy: these are touchstones for any ear and every era.

Read RJB’s full essay on Messiah here

Check out Jennens’ full libretto for Messiah here

A complete performance of Messiah from 2016 given by the Choir of Trinity Church Wall Street, led by Julian Wachner. CLICK HERE to view.

For information about Trinity’s 2020 performance of Messiah (a Facebook premiere), click here

A complete performance of Messiah with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists, led by John Eliot Gardiner