The Advent season is a call to set our eyes on Jesus as the long-expected and coming Messiah. Few works of music are better suited to help us do that than George Frederic Handel’s Messiah. Messiah is unique because its text is entirely taken from the Scriptures. Moreover, it takes as its subject the birth, redemptive work, and glorification of Christ. In what follows, I hope to inspire you to deeply reflect on the wonders of Messiah’s person and work through becoming more acquainted with this masterwork that has been passed down from Handel’s day until our own.
George Frederic Handel (1685–1759)
The man often called England’s greatest composer was actually German, born in the conservative Lutheran northern city of Halle. By eighteen he had left his hometown for the city of Hamburg, with its flourishing music scene, and found work as an opera orchestra violinist. There he also became acquainted with the new genre of “passion”—an extended choral work for Holy Week services focusing on the events preceeding Christ’s crucifixion—and he composed one. He then spent three years in Italy learning from master composers how to write Italian opera, which was the rage all across Europe.
By 1712 he would move permanently to London, where Italian serious opera was the top entertainment at the time. Opera was attended by everyone, like professional sports today—the wealthy would attend the same show night after night, socializing in their luxurious boxes, the lower classes standing on the main floor or sitting in the top balcony. Italian operas were historical tragedies that offered heart wrenching stories, dramatic action, the chance to emote with characters, and virtuoso soloists whose vocal acrobatics made them superstars. Soon Handel’s operas—Julius Caesar and others—dominated the London scene. He would also become an impresario, shaping the London music industry with his business savvy, and he rose to international fame as the top opera composer in England of his time.
Then, in the 1730s Handel’s career unexpectedly began to crumble for two reasons. The Church of England passed a ban on the performance of stage works during Lent. That meant over a month of lost income for the opera houses and for Handel. Some thought that the stroke Handel suffered in April 1737 was brought on by the stress. But beyond that setback, audience tastes had changed, which had already become clear the previous decade when “ballad opera” took London by storm in 1728. The lead characters of these comedic plays were servants and criminals who outwitted and openly lampooned the clergy, aristocracy, and politicians, the songs were popular ballads often vulgar, and they were in English. Ballad opera won the day with the lower class and the growing merchant class, causing a culture war. Serious Italian opera still had supporters, but Handel was eventually producing his works to nearly empty, unheated opera houses, and he was facing financial ruin.
Handel was at a crisis point that many musicians still face. Would he write crude music to pay the bills and please the audience, or would he invent a whole new genre that would be good for people? He chose the second path. He essentially created English “oratorio”—a genre of dramatic musical narrative that tells a story through song. By taking this path, Handel found a way to keep large audiences even during Lent, edify them with Scripture, and delight them musically with stories of famous Old Testament characters like Solomon, Esther, and Moses.[1] The Bible was his repository for the text script—what is called the “libretto”—of the oratorios. Because of Handel, oratorio became the English sacred genre for more than a century to come. And again, people were edified, the Scriptures came to life, and Handel did it all without the staged action of a play.
1. He retained the soloists, as in the dialogue between Moses and Pharaoh in his Israel in Egypt, but it’s the choir and orchestra that make the ten plagues so exciting, with strings as the buzzing gnats and flies, tympani thunderclaps for the plague of hail, and the chorus as the children of Israel singing eight different parts stacked up at the climactic moments. The choir and orchestra are the musical arsenal that advances and unifies the drama.
In 1741 Handel was invited to produce a season in the city of Dublin which changed his life forever. He would typically compose works ahead for each season, so he wrote Messiah not for a commission, but to take with him to Dublin for a possible performance. The speed with which Handel composed Messiah in summer of 1741 is miraculous but true—he wrote the work in 24 days—an astonishing rate for an almost three hour musical piece that weaves together both instruments and voices.[2] He reported working night and day and barely eating during those few weeks, and later described his experiencing “as it were the heavens opened” as he was setting the Scriptures and creating this musical portrait of Christ and his future glory.
2. He noted each day’s progress in his score: it was begun 22 August, finished Sept 14 September, 1741.
The premier of Messiah in Dublin on Tuesday, 13 April 1742 was a benefit for several hospitals, and audience response was tremendous. There were six sold-out performances with 600 people at each. The advertisement famously requested the women to attend without hoop skirts and the men to come without their swords to allow more seating space.
Upon Handel’s return home to London in 1742, he received an invitation to produce a concert to dedicate the organ he had donated to the new Foundling “Hospital,” a children’s home for abandoned infants and children. For this he chose to perform Messiah.[3] Handel’s May 1750 Foundling performance of Messiah had huge sales (almost 1400 tickets were sold, a massive number at that time) and brought in the sum of 1,000 pounds. The repeated connection with charity performances catapulted Messiah to fame. Charles Burney, eminent English musician, diarist-historian and a younger member of Handel’s circle, would write decades later about this Foundling concert: “And from that time to the present, this great work has been heard in all parts of the kingdom with increasing reverence and delight; it has fed the hungry, clothed the naked, fostered the orphan, and enriched succeeding managers of the Oratorios, more than any single production in this or any country.”[4] By the mid 1750s, Messiah performances were becoming fairly widespread in cathedral cities which became regional hubs for oratorio seasons, and continued to spread internationally. Even today, Messiah remains a staple work in concert halls and large churches around the world both at Christmas and before Easter. But how did Handel decide what words to put in this famous composition? He had some help from a friend.
3. Charity “foundation houses” or “hospitals” were institutions built by private donors to address England’s rampant social problems at the time. Most were not actual hospitals but homes for abandoned infants and for women and girls rescued from prostitution. The girls and women received an excellent education and spiritual instruction, in which musical training, specifically sacred music was given great importance. They played instruments and sang in choirs for their chapel services and for large fundraising concerts to support the institutions; these became gala annual society events. The flourishing music programs at the foundations created an ongoing need for new sacred music in appealing styles for each season’s concerts.
4. Charles Burney, “Sketch of the Life of Handel,” An Account of the Musical Performances . . . in Commemoration of Handel (London, 1785, facsimile reprint edition Amsterdam, 1964), p. 27. Andrew Gant writes rather touchingly: “Jennens was a loyal though critical friend, a deep, sad and wise thinker, and a fine writer. All this is in Messiah. Handel’s Messiah is Jennen’s Messiah, too.” Gant, Making of Messiah, 49.
Charles Jennens, Handel’s Librettist
Charles Jennens (1700–73) was Handel’s “librettist”—the one who selected the texts to be used in the oratorio. Jennens was a “scholar . . . with a deep knowledge of his Bible, a passionate high church Anglican, patron of the arts, generous philanthropist” and estate heir who faithfully held morning and evening Prayer Book prayers for his household in the elegant chapel of his family’s magnificent country house. Among other things, he was also a pioneering editor of Shakespeare. With Jennens experience in handling dramatic texts and serious study of Scripture, he was the ideal librettist and collaborator for Handel in this project. He and Handel had an admirable and deeply respectful working relationship for decades, and they would collaborate on several biblical oratorios (including Saul and Jephthe, Handel’s last).[5]
For the title page of the Messiah word book first printed for the 1743 London performances Jennens selected two quotations. First is the Latin phrase Majora canamus, “We sing of higher things,” which is Virgil.[6] By quoting Virgil on his title page Jennens was stating emphatically: “We are about to sing of something infinitely higher and greater than all this world’s wisdom and enlightened human reason can offer.”
5. Andrew Gant writes rather touchingly: “Jennens was a loyal though critical friend, a deep, sad and wise thinker, and a fine writer. All this is in Messiah. Handel’s Messiah is Jennen’s Messiah, too.” Gant, Making of Messiah, 49.
6. Virgil, Eclogue IV.
The second quote from I Timothy 3:16 and Colossians 2:3 makes his point brilliantly. Both are taken from Christological hymns cited by Paul in his epistles: the Timothy hymn is the shortest one, and it contains the gospel—from incarnation to glorification—compressed into six breathtaking lines set in three parallelisms and introduced by the prologue phrase, “For great is the mystery of godliness.” The Colossians quote highlights Jesus, “In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” As his concise, personal commentary on the work at hand, Jennens could scarcely have chosen better texts.
The Libretto and Musical Styles
“Anthologizing a sacred text at this time was a Protestant notion,”[7] writes English choral conductor and historian Andrew Gant, who notes that the practice continued among composers of English anthems and other church music even long after Handel: “The later great luminaries of English church music like Samuel Sebastian Wesley [Charles Wesley’s grandson] became expert at gathering text like a shepherd from all over their Bible by a kind of personalized concordance, linking themes, words and ideas across texts and testaments.” This is verified in countless pieces of sacred choral music, but “Messiah is the ultimate example of this process,” Gant contends.[8]
7. Anthologize means to collect multiple works and put them into an anthology. Thus, a hymnbook is an anthology of musical works.
8. Andrew Gant, The Making of Handel’s Messiah (Oxford: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2020), 42.
The libretto (or “word book”—the listing of the biblical texts used in the musical composition) of the oratorio is organized into three Parts in which the story line of Messiah unfolds in fifty-three separate movements or “numbers” (two are merely instrumental). The fifty-one movements with lyrics quote eighty-five total verses of Scripture. Jennens carefully selected, juxtaposed, and arranged the biblical texts in the three Parts to create a narrative portrait of Christ that invites the listener to ponder the majestic person and work of Jesus the Messiah. Within each Part, Jennings grouped the individual movements into smaller units he called “scenes.” Handel, when setting each text to music, could choose between one of three musical types:
- Recitative – a speech-like, nonrhythmic style for solo voice that tells the narrative (or dialogue), usually with sparse keyboard plus cello accompaniment (this is called “dry” or recitativo secco in Italian); If orchestra is added to support the recitative, it is called “accompanied” or accompagnato);
- Aria (or Air) – this is a memorable, tuneful melody for solo voice with orchestra whose text reflects on the action taking place and is designed to express or convey one main emotional state for the audience to participate in vicariously; and,
- Choruses – in which the full choir comments on or responds to the action.
Handel’s usual approach to the “scene” groupings was to begin with a solo recitative to narrate the prophecy or action, followed by a solo aria to contemplate and express emotion about what has happened or will happen, leading into a chorus to respond. This was not for him a rigid formula; he varied his format of scenes, especially adding more choruses when building up to the great climaxes of Parts II and III, but this framework characterizes Part I and it does establish an overall flow which helps us follow the oratorio’s trajectory when listening to the work. There is a progression in musical energy: recitative is speechlike, aria is richly melodic, then the full-blown choir.
Messiah‘s Overture
The overture which introduces the work stands separate from the three Parts and deserves a word of explanation. This orchestral number is in the Baroque genre of French overture, the type of piece customarily used throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to begin a serious opera or major choral-orchestral work.[9] Its function was honorific to accompany the entrance of the King into the theater or cathedral—royalty was signaled by the first section in slow duple meter with a somber, majestic mood, solid chordal (homophonic) movement, and a sharply majestic dotted rhythm (long-short) rhythmic pattern throughout. This grand, slow, regal processional leads without a break into the second section, with its fast tempo and light, imitative texture. Handel composed many French overtures for his operas and other works but here the genre suits Messiah in the most ultimate sense. Setting the tone for the entire oratorio, it foreshadows the praise of Messiah as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The overture’s second half, although imitative and lively, is in a minor key, perhaps thus foreshadowing for the listener not only the Messiah’s royalty but his sufferings to come.
9. On the score the movement is labeled Sinfonia, at that time still an umbrella term commonly used for a variety of instrumental ensemble compositions, but the piece is a French overture.
Scripture Sources of Messiah
Every word in Messiah comes from Scripture and exalts the name of Jesus. In Part I, Isaiah is cited most — with Malachi, Haggai, and Zechariah being called in as supportive witnesses—and Luke is cited as the fulfillment of those promises. Part II draws mostly from Isaiah, the Psalms, and the New Testament interpretations of those Psalms in Hebrews and Romans, with the closing Hallelujah chorus taken from Revelation. Part III contains only one Old Testament quotation as its first number—the jewel from Job 19:25 (“I know that my Redeemer liveth”). The rest of this section (for seven consecutive pieces) moves through I Corinthians 15—Paul’s “resurrection chapter”—then sweeps to a glorious finish through the “victorious” chapter of Romans 8 into the heavenly worship chorus in Revelation 5. Overall, the greatest collection of verses from a single biblical book is from Isaiah, which also serves as a bridge leading us from Part I into II.[10]
10. Editor’s Note: Over the course of this month, we will return to all these sections of Scripture and supply theological and devotional reflection.
Part I begins with Isaiah’s message of comfort to God’s people and what would become John the Baptist’s cry, quoting Isaiah, to “prepare the way of the Lord” (Isaiah 40:3, cited in Mark 1:3). He is coming, but his people and his path must be prepared. This leads directly into the Old Testament prophecies of God’s coming as Immanuel to comfort and be with his people—but also to judge, purge, and refine them. These prophecies are then fulfilled in Luke’s narrative of Jesus’s birth and the praise of the angelic chorus, followed by more Isaianic prophecies that tell of Jesus’s earthly ministry—of His healing miracles, His works of deliverance, His preaching “peace to the heathen,” and His offering rest for the heavy laden.
The rich panoply of names and titles of Christ in Part I encompasses: “Messenger of the covenant” (Haggai 2:6–7), “Emmanuel, God with us” (Isaiah 7:14; cf. Matt. 1:23), Judah’s God (as in, “Behold thy God!”, Isaiah 60:1), the five great messianic titles of Isaiah 9:6, “a Savior, which is Christ the Lord,” (Luke 2:11), Thy King (from Zechariah 9:10, “Behold, thy King cometh unto thee”), and the “righteous Savior” (also Zech. 9:10). As we follow the trajectory of Part I, the imagery changes dramatically from God being “like a refiner’s fire” to Messiah being “like a shepherd” who gently leads those with young.
Moving abruptly from that tender portrait of Messiah as good shepherd, Part II, from its very first note, reveals Messiah as the Lamb of God—the bearer of the world’s sins—and then as the Man of Sorrows who suffers and is stricken. But this Messiah ultimately does not remain in the grave; he ascends on high. From this lofty position, the exalted Messiah will return as Judge, breaking the rebel nations like a potter’s vessel. He will at last be known and proclaimed as King of Kings and Lord of Lords when all the earth’s kingdoms become His own.
We note that the names and titles for Messiah in Part II are far different from those in Part I. While Part I ended with Jesus’s invitation to the weary to bear his light burden and his easy yoke, Part II shows us Messiah Himself as the Burden Bearer, the One who bore the heaviest burden of all—human sin. We hear in John the Baptist’s riveting declaration a revelation of the Messiah’s identity and a mandate for all humanity to “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.” The next four numbers, the heart of the Passion narrative, draw from Isaiah 53, which engraves the picture of the Messiah as a Man of Sorrows and Sin-Bearer more and more deeply on our hearts. However rebellious and wayward we have become, we hear “The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:3). He bore our sin away. The title “Lamb of God” resonates across the rest of the oratorio from this moment on to the final note.
Then, after all the suffering that Messiah endures throughout His earthly life and in His passion, his death and crucifixion are now summed up, starkly, in a single verse: “He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgressions of thy people He was stricken” (Isaiah 53:8).
Immediately thereafter, we hear David in Psalm 16:10 proclaiming Messiah as God’s “Holy One” whom God will not allow to remain in hell (or Sheol), or to see corruption. The English word “hell” (Sheol) here is the sole reference to Jesus being in the grave. From that point, the Holy One who conquered the sting of death and the grave is immediately welcomed into the “everlasting doors” as a victorious king returning from battle, as the “Lord mighty in battle” and as the “King of Glory” Himself (both of those titles coming from Psalm 24). As it turns out, Psalm 24 is a liturgy psalm, and, specifically, it is a royal entrance liturgy. This is no mere human king returning from an earthly conflict, but the Messiah, returning victorious from the cosmic battle on the cross—the battle foretold ever since Genesis 3:15. The writer of Hebrews contributes here the glorious title “my Son,” when he quotes the Psalmist, “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee” (Heb. 1:5 citing Ps. 2:7). Two more titles for Messiah will follow at the end of Part II: “[God’s] Anointed” from Psalm 2:2, and “[God’s] Christ” from Revelation 11:15.
Messiah is now seen as the “King of Glory,” but He has one final battle yet to come, foretold in Psalm 2 and finished forever in Revelation 19. Toward the end of Part II is a sequence of four weighty movements that encompass almost the entire second Psalm. Psalms 1 and 2, often closely paired by scholars, have been referred to together as the gateway to the entire Psalter. Psalm 2 is the first messianic psalm, the first one with clear reference to Christ and royal sonship, and was an enthronement psalm. With this Psalm 2 sequence, notes Roger Bullard, “we begin our approach to the great Hallelujah Chorus, the [buildup] to the heavenly enthronement of King Messiah.” [11]
11. Roger A. Bullard, Messiah: The Gospel According to Handel’s Oratorio (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 114
First, we hear him named as King by Yahweh himself in Psalm 2:6: “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion,”, but, as Bullard explains,
he is a king over a world that does not acknowledge him as such . . . [He is] a Wonderful Counsellor, [ironically,] over a world where the rulers take counsel against him, [He is] Mighty God over a world that holds God’s law in derision, . . . Prince of Peace over a world where the nations still furiously rage together. . . . All the angels of God worship him, but this is not the case . . . on earth. The word has gone out into all lands,
. . . but it is being reviled by the nations that are here rebelling against God.[12] At long last, the Psalm 2 sequence ends with the victory of the Son, in which the rebellious nations (if they continue to refuse His rule) are dashed in pieces like a potter’s vessel, and Messiah is praised as “King of Kings, and Lord of Lords” in the majestic Hallelujah chorus.
12. Roger A. Bullard, Messiah: The Gospel According to Handel’s Oratorio (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 114.
Part III begins with the clearest Old Testament prophecy of Christ’s resurrection (“He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth”) and, through His victory, the sure promise of our own future resurrection (“in my flesh shall I see God” from Job 29:25-26) Both prophecy and promise are confirmed in the New Testament proclamations that Jesus has won the victory over death forever, for which He is praised in the heavenly worship as the worthy Lamb that was slain.
In Part III the images and types give way to clear New Testament fulfillment of Christ as the One by whom came the resurrection and thus our own victory over death. Adam by whom came death, is replaced by the perfect second Adam by whom comes life (John 1:1–4). Job names him “my Redeemer” who “liveth” (Job 19:25), while Paul calls Christ “the first fruits of them that sleep” (I Cor. 15:20). Only once in the entire oratorio, near the end of Part III, we are at last given Messiah’s full name and title, “our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 10:15 and 18 complete the messianic narrative with the office of Christ’s eternal priesthood in the phrase “who is at the right hand of God, who maketh intercession for us” (Rom. 8:33–34). With Christ risen, ascended, and glorified, His work finished and His intercession for us ongoing, what more can remain than for us to join His heavenly praise already being offered before the throne of God by crying, “Worthy is the Lamb”? The heavenly worship hymn given in Revelation 5:12–14 sums up the message of the entire person and work of Messiah in one name and image, the “Lamb that was slain,” which is the fitting final chorus of this glorious work.
Conclusion
In conclusion, since great music must be heard and sung to be fully appreciated, I hope you have opportunity to experience a live performance of Messiah near you. There are also wonderful performances available online, but if setting aside three hours to hear the whole oratorio is not possible, you may wish to devote an hour to hear Part I, the Christmas section, or listen to one movement per day. For instance, the C. S. Lewis Institute has an Advent resource that provides a short meditation on one movement of Messiah per day plus the audio link for that piece from an excellent performance of Messiah. Be sure to download the entire Scripture texts of Messiah that we’ve provided here on Christ Over All as you listen along and for your own meditation and joy.
British music historian Donald Burrows, in his esteemed biography of Handel, places Messiah in the context of Handel’s entire output with one line: “In the end, Messiah stands alone.”[13] Yet, during this Advent season we are reminded that in glory the Lord Jesus—our Messiah—does not stand alone; He is surrounded by a multitude whom no one can number, a multitude that sing the endless Hallelujahs before his throne. As we long to join that worship and look eagerly for His coming, Christians can find great help and great hope even at a time of war and great need in our world and perhaps in our lives, by singing Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. And not alone that chorus, but let us this year be uplifted and gain a greater vision of Jesus, our glorious Messiah, by meditating on the words and music of this entire biblical oratorio as we pray with anticipation, “come quickly, Lord Jesus!”
13. Donald Burrows, Handel: Messiah, Cambridge Music Handbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 57.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bullard, Roger A. Messiah: The Gospel According to Handel’s Oratorio. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993.
Gant, Andrew. The Making of Handel’s Messiah. Oxford: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, 2020.
Stapert, Calvin R. Handel’s Messiah: Comfort for God’s People. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010.
DISCOGRAPHY
Handel Messiah: The Complete Work. The Cambridge Singers and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, John Rutter, conductor. 2 CD set.
WEB RESOURCES
C.S. Lewis Institute. Handel’s Messiah Digital Advent Calendar 2023, accessed 11 November, 2024.
