Handel’s Messiah

The Messiah was composed by George Friedrich Handel in 1741. It was neither his first nor his last oratorio, yet it has become his most popular and most performed work. Following his journey from his earliest oratorios to his last, Handel’s style of composition and use of various choral techniques set the Messiah apart from his other works and similar oratorios of the time.

Handel wrote his first oratorio in Italy in 1707. Called La Resurrenzione, it was in the Italian style and had Italian text. It was performed in Prince Ruspoli’s town house in Rome. Thus began the era of Handel’s oratorios. He wrote another Italian oratorio in 1708, called Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, but twelve years would pass before he would another such work. Handel’s main focus at this time was Italian opera; oratorio was just something to dabble in. He did write three more early oratorios: Esther, 1721; Deborah, 1733; and Athaliah, also in 1733. However, he still did not fully devote himself to oratorio until he wrote Saul in 1738. Israel in Egypt was also composed at this time, and these two mark the beginning of Handel’s oratorio as we know it. He abandoned opera altogether in 1740, and from then on concentrated solely on the oratorio.

Four elements contributed to the development of the modern form: Italian oratorio, which Handel was exposed to first; opera, in particular the Neapolitan style, but also the English tradition of the lyric stage, used by composers such as Henry Purcell; the different forms of church music in North Germany, Italy, and England; and the secular cantata, especially the English tradition. A beautiful description of the oratorio is given by Jens Larsen, in his book Handel’s Messiah. He says “Oratorio acknowledges two masters, the church and the theatre; it draws on the traditions of both of them, notably in such matters as the place and function of the performance, the choice of subject and the form of the text, the construction of the music and its actual execution”. This is the explanation for the ability to transform, which is one of the most outstanding features, and the very essence of the Handelian oratorio.

The first of Handel’s Italian compositions, Le Resurrenzione, uses biblical characters, John and Mary Magdalene, but also Lucifer, who is not biblical. Il Trionfo, his second oratorio, is purely allegorical. These become two popular categories in his later oratorios, but are joined by a third category – those based on mythological subjects. His works can be further divided. In the biblical category there are heroic, anthem, and narrative groups. In the heroic compositions, the fate of the Israelites is at the forefront, and their deliverer is “the hero”. In the anthem, the subject revolves around the relationship between God and mankind, not an individual effort. The last group of the biblical category is the narrative, which involves the fate of one or several characters as the central theme. Esther and Saul are examples of heroic oratorios, Israel In Egypt and Messiah are anthem oratorios, and Joseph, Solomon, and Susanna are a few of the narrative oratorios. The non-biblical oratorios are classified as either allegorical (concert/cantata), like L’Allegro and Triumph of Time and Truth, or mythological, like Semele and Hercules.

The works that Handel composed in the period from 1732-1733 have the same basic theme: the fate of the Israelites. When he began composing again, those works from 1736-1740 had very different, secular themes. These had influences from the Italian allegorical oratorio, but were composed with a more musically English style. In 1738, in the middle of his secular works, Handel wrote two biblical oratorios, Saul and Israel in Egypt. Here Handel begins to take the biblical oratorio in a new direction. Because the oratorio was no longer only a tool of the church, composers had to find a way of replacing the religious stamp with an inner strength to capture the audience. Saul is not simply about the Israelites’ fate. It becomes a more theoretical problem of the fear of losing power; the human drama takes precedence over the fate of God’s people. Israel in Egypt uses the opposite technique – instead of downplaying the biblical subject, Handel focuses on it more directly than ever before. A single event in history, the ten plagues and the flight from Egypt, is the entire focus of this work. There is no individual character, only the choir acting as all-seeing narrator.

Up to this point in his career he had been composing in a similar style to the English anthem of the later 17th century. This style used a chain form involving arioso-recitative solo episodes linked together by choral sections. Handel favored a cantata-like construction with weighty choral sections and numbered arias and