After collecting selected texts from the Bible and concocting a few psalms here and there, the English landlord Charles Jennens sent a libretto of his own in July 1741 to the London-based German opera composer, Georg Friedrich Handel. Based on it, he had to compose an oratorio in English: a song and a reflection on the relationship between man and God. Also, it would address the mystery of Redemption.
It was not the first time that the wealthy landowner had been a contributor to Handel, but this time he was quite confident in the success of the venture. And so he lets a friend know: "I hope [Handel] will lay out his whole Genius & Skill upon it, that the Composition may excell all his former Compositions, as the Subject excells every other subject. The Subject is Messiah".
The oratorio - A new niche
Four years earlier, Handel had faced the failure of his third venture as a composer-entrepreneur. He still would write some Italian operas, but on the advice of friends and acquaintances, he had already been putting some distance from the Italian lyric genre, entering the field of the oratorio in English. Therefore, the libretto he received from Jennens fell into his lap.
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| G.F. Handel (1685 - 1759) |
According to his own notes, the composer began work on The Messíah oratorio on August 22, 1741, and had it completed 24 days later. However, Handel's most famous oratorio could not be premiered in London with its original title and had to wait for the composer to travel to Ireland to be premiered in 1742 at the New Music Hall in Dublin as a charity performance in favour of convicts and sick people of all kinds.
On his return to London, to alleviate the criticism arising from the use of a sacred theme in an environment that had little or nothing to do with the liturgy, the title had to be changed to Sacred Drama. Its reception, while warm, was far from awakening the fervour that it will reach years later.
The Hallelujah Chorus
The oratorio is made up of three sections, in which choirs, recitatives and arias alternate. The famous Hallelujah chorus, which the author had already used in less elaborate versions in two previous compositions, is sung at the end of the second part.
Although the oratorio is not properly a sacred story, it is customary to represent it for Easter, or Christmas. This is not the case in the video presented here, in which the Canadian choral group Niagara Chorus bursts into a food center on any given day in November – thanks to a flashmob – to surprise the dozens of carefree customers with eighteenth-century music while they enjoy their contemporary burgers and fries.
