Music to Make the Soul Soar
I should be sorry if I only entertained them. I wished to make them better.
George Frideric Handel, in response to a compliment from an audience member
Every Christmas, the music of George Frideric Handel fills concert halls and churches around the world. There’s some irony in that. Handel never meant for his now famous Messiah to be associated with Christmas. He intended it for the Lenten season—the days preceding Easter. Still, over 270 years after it was written, the Messiah is still loved and performed around Christmas.
It wasn’t that way in the beginning.
Against Dad’s Wishes
Born in the German town of Halle, Handel grew up with a mother who nurtured his love of music. But his surgeon-barber father, who was in his sixties when Handel was born, forbid his son to study it. He had chosen law as the career his son would pursue; music was just a distraction. Tradition says Handel would sneak into a room and play the clavichord—a keyboard instrument popular in the time—whenever his father was gone. Handel’s father relented when his son turned nine, allowing the boy to take lessons in organ. His father died when Handel was eleven. By the time he was twelve, Handel was capable of substituting for the church organist and had written his first musical composition. The future composer did take a stab at studying law but soon abandoned it in favor of music.
Handel continued his musical studies in Germany and Italy, then moved to England, where he would spend the rest of his life.
Changing Tastes
Handel’s first musical love was opera, but such large musical presentations had lost popularity in England. Handel began to lose money on his productions, yet stubbornly continued to write opera music. He often played to nearly empty halls, joking that the acoustics were better with fewer people in the seats. Finances were often a problem for the maestro, and became so severe he feared debtor’s prison. Handel had to make adjustments. His humor was being tempered by financial need.
In 1737 his opera company went bankrupt and, likely due to the stress this caused, he suffered a mild stroke. Handel then turned to writing oratorios. Unlike opera with its costumes, drama, and acting, oratorios were less dramatic, had no costumes, and were usually based on biblical persons or events.
One such oratorio, Esther, offended many church leaders, who felt such sacred material shouldn’t be performed in theaters. Still, Handel pressed on, and when the royal family attended, things turned around and the work obtained some success despite its opposition.
Advertising posters for Israel in Egypt were torn down, and some people disrupted performances. All of this puzzled and angered Handel. After all, he was a Christian man, devout, and well-versed in Scripture—better than most bishops, according to him. He continued his work in the face of criticism, but financial problems continued to hamper his career.
Down and Depressed
Despair was a familiar feeling for Handel; the roller-coaster ride that was his life had left him depressed and broke. Financial problems and constant criticism by the English church and by detractors who called him “that German nincompoop” haunted him. In those dark days, his friend Charles Jennens came to visit. Jennens was a wealthy landowner and patron of the arts. He was also a librettist—a person who writes the text for operas or librettos. A devout member of the Anglican church, he had written a text he wanted set to music. The material was taken directly from the Bible and meant to show God’s work of redemption. Much of the material came from the Old Testament. He needed Handel to compose the music around the work. Over time Jennens and Handel would work on five oratorios, including the Messiah.
Handel received a second visit, this time from a charitable group wanting to use the oratorio to raise money to free men confined to debtor’s prison. Handel would receive a commission for composing the work.
The work consumed Handel, who locked himself away and worked night and day, scarcely eating. His production of the Messiah is the stuff of legend. He produced Part I in six days, Part II in nine, and Part III in another six. It took only two days to finish the orchestration. In those twenty-four days, he produced 260 pages of material. A traditional story has Handel saying to a servant after finishing the Hallelujah Chorus, “I did think I did see all heaven before me, and the great God himself.”1
Messiah premiered on April 13, 1742 in Dublin, where it was well-received and highly praised. Over seven hundred people attended. To make it possible to seat more, women were asked not to wear hoops in their dresses and men not to wear their swords. This allowed for the seating of about a hundred additional people. (Women stopped wearing hoops to concerts after this.) The first performance raised enough money to free over 140 people from debtor’s prison. It seemed as if Handel’s fate had turned.
London was a different matter. It took a year before Messiah would play in a major city, and when it did, it was panned by critics. To settle some of the controversy, Handel changed the title, which some thought was blasphemous, to A New Sacred Oratorio. King George II attended and stood at the singing of the Hallelujah Chorus. Of course, when the king stands, everyone stands. Historians debate why he did this. Some suggest the king, who had hearing problems, thought the national anthem was being played; others suggest he just needed to stretch his legs; still others say it was a spiritual statement. Whatever the initial reason, audiences around the world have been standing during the chorus ever since.
But it didn’t take long before Handel was playing to empty houses again, and he was on the brink of poverty once more. He would conduct thirty performances and only one of those was in a church—Bristol Cathedral.
Handel faced health issues, including strokes. Later in life he was hindered by cataracts. Despite surgeries to correct the problem, he eventually went blind. He died the day before Easter, April 14, 1759, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
The Impact
Handel followed his musical dreams and experienced fame and disgrace. Still, his work continues to inspire. He was a man whose faith and art were inseparable. Although he also wrote secular work, it is his Bible-inspired composition that lives on after him, proving that art is a viable means of spiritual expression. There are those whose only exposure to the redemptive work of Christ is what they’ve heard in Messiah.