Great music is forever. Whether written today or nearly three centuries ago, it will resonate in people and throughout time. And some musical pieces, depending on their potency, will come to epitomize an ideal and personify an experience or feeling.
Such is the case with the great oratorio Messiah by George Frideric Handel. Having long ago been associated with the Christmas season, the work has become a worldwide annual tradition. For many reasons, the music is embedded in our cultural psyche, and it’s inspired generations of listeners and musicians alike.
The Santa Maria Philharmonic Society is including a performance of Handel’s Messiah in its season this year on Dec. 15—and, in the spirit of the Christmas tradition, is performing both Part I and Part II of the oratorio. The Santa Maria Philharmonic Orchestra will be joined by the combined forces of the local community choir Coastal Voices, as well as the Allan Hancock College Singers (the latter of which, I must admit, I am a member).
The journey necessary to present a piece of music at this level of genius is a demanding one, yet it yields a level of edification and satisfaction rivaled only by other works of true, inspired genius. Handel’s own journey toward composing his oratorio was a long one, filled with his own trials, tribulations, and challenges. But it produced one of history’s most celebrated and endearing works of music.
The ascent of genius
I had the privilege of sitting in on a recent session of Allan Hancock College’s music history class taught by Ann Lucas, D.M.A. Lucas is also director of the Allan Hancock College Singers, which, as I can personally attest, has been rehearsing studiously under her tutelage for the upcoming performance. Lucas is an inveterate scholar of music and exhibits a passionate and honed lecturing style.
On this day, her subject was Handel. During her lecture, she related the composer’s first struggle in life: to learn music.
“He was born in 1785 and was north German by birth,” she said. “He did not come from a strong musical background like Bach, who was from a long family tradition of musicians.”
Handel grew up in a time that wasn’t as kind to musicians as is today. His father, a barber/surgeon, wanted his son to study law, but the young George, against his father’s wishes, showed some of his characteristic perseverance when he learned music behind his father’s back. Eventually the elder Handel was convinced to allow his son to study music thanks to some advice from high places. The young artist received formal training in organ playing and counterpoint.
“This is a composer who was always tilted towards the
vocal art his entire life,” Lucas said. “He was always interested in singing and the human voice—and your main vehicle, if that is what you are interested in, is opera.”
Handel enjoyed a stellar rise early in his career thanks to the success of his early operas premiered in Italy. The young and unencumbered composer traveled across Europe premiering his music, which exhibited a mastery of the Italian opera style.
“Handel is one of those guys, that when he was exposed to opera, he had been bit by the bug,” Lucas said. “He fell in love with the theater and everything that goes with it—you know, the smell of the grease paint and the roar of the crowd.”
The Baroque opera culture was one of cutthroat politics and scandal. Handel famously made what became a permanent move to England, where he founded subsequent opera companies, which ultimately closed. There were various reasons for his opera company going under—including feuding factions of royalty supporting a competing opera house—but the main one is because the mode he wrote in was going out of style. In the mid 1700s in England, the Italian opera tradition was being satirized and lampooned along with Handel and his company. Aged and depressed, Handel contemplated retiring from composing.
It was then that he received a request for an artistic residency of sorts in Dublin, Ireland. Knowing he would need new material, Handel set to work. He received a libretto for an oratorio, basically the sacred version of an opera without any dramatic acting or stage direction, which included verses from the Bible in English. In a little more than three weeks after beginning work on Messiah, Handel had finished his masterpiece, which would premiere in Dublin in 1742 and plunge headfirst into history.
Echoing through time
How does a work like Handel’s Messiah become so deeply rooted in our culture? Many potential factors come to mind, but, according to the Santa Maria Philharmonic Society’s musical director, orchestral conductor, and Maestro John Farrer, what makes the work so great is truly unidentifiable.
“You could talk about technical things like harmony, counterpoint, melodic constructions, formal architecture, all of those kinds of things,” he said, “but the truth of the matter is that there is an X factor, if you will, in all great art. There’s something there that transcends our daily experience.”
Farrer has been conducting for the Santa Maria Philharmonic Society since the year 2000. He’s also currently conducting for orchestras in Bakersfield and Roswell, among other guest spots across the globe. During the span of his career, he’s conducted the Messiah more times than he can recall.
“For a long time I’ve wondered what is it about certain pieces of music that make them last,” he said. “For Messiah I think it’s because of the very special, inspired nature of the work, that it has established itself over the years as a Christmas tradition and people want to hear it.
“I hope that when people leave the performance,” he continued, “they feel uplifted and that they have been through a special experience.”
The Santa Maria Philharmonic Society called on the help of not just the vocal ensemble at Hancock, but Coastal Voices, directed by Margaret Nelson, whose choir has such a love for the piece that they’ve programmed a Messiah sing-along concert for Dec. 17 at St. Andrew United Methodist Church in Orcutt, just two days after the Philharmonic performance.
“Sing-alongs for the Messiah are extremely popular,” Nelson said. “People will travel 50 miles to come to a Messiah sing-along.”
Probably one of the only pieces in classical music that could actually justify a sing-along concert, Messiah certainly stands the test of time due to the amount of pleasure found in singing the work.
“If you are an audience member at the Philharmonic concert, some people will bring along their scores,” Nelson said, “and some people actually sing along in the audience even though it’s not really appropriate, because people are driven to sing the Messiah.”
The quality of Handel’s vocal writing is such that it’s easy for a listener to understand and engage in the text. If the Messiah is fun to listen to for audience members, such pleasure pales in comparison to the immense joy afforded to those who actually sing it. Though they’re no walk in the park, Handel’s vocal lines are relatively easy to sing. Even when singing a harmony to the main melody, the movement of the part is intuitive.
“You know what the old cliché is,” said Hancock’s Lucas. “It’s that Handel wrote vocally, and Bach wrote orchestrally.”
One only has to recall the melody of the famous “Hallelujah” chorus—a theme so permanently fused into our collective consciousness that even Madison Avenue will hijack it to sell insurance or cell phones—to understand the implications of a well-written vocal melody.
“It is so well crafted and it is so well written,” Nelson said. “When you analyze it, you can see he was a genius in crafting this music because it isn’t difficult and it all fits together.”
Discussing the sacred nature of the Messiah can’t happen without mentioning its popularity. Premiered in a time when Christianity was the prevailing paradigm, the work spoke directly to everyone in the culture.
“First of all, you have a lot of people who went to church and believed it then,” Lucas said, “but you also had people who knew it as such a deeply imbedded cultural value that, irrespective of their personal beliefs, they still understood.”
The Messiah is usually performed around Christmas or Easter as the text deals with the prophecy and birth of Christ in Part I, the suffering and death in Part II, and the resurrection in Part III. This cemented the Messiah as a tradition for two holidays, depending on which parts you perform.
Handel himself was no stranger to the church or to composing for the church, even at one of the highest levels of his time. The elector of Hanover, Prince George in Germany, appointed Handel Kapellmeister, which is essentially the master of the chapel music. When Handel permanently moved to England, he became the director of the Royal Academy of Music. He was commissioned to write for the British Royalty, including a coronation anthem for the crowning of King George II. The piece he wrote for that occasion, Zadok the Priest, is still performed during Royal British coronation ceremonies at Westminster Abbey. Handel also served as a chapel organist at Westminster Abbey where he was ultimately buried.
Another aspect critical to the permanence of this work in the repertoire is the fact that it’s set in English. The oratorio, a form that came to be more than a century before Handel’s time, usually featured scripture set in Latin, a language not understood by most concertgoers during the 18th century. For Handel to set his oratorio in English, it meant that the western, English-speaking world had a work of music that expressed their deeply held spiritual beliefs in their own vernacular.
“The fact that it is in English is very important,” said Maestro Farrer. “I think that makes the work accessible; anybody who walks in can know what we’re saying.”
Certain aspects and strokes of genius in the work have to do with how the music relates to the text and would otherwise go unnoticed in another language. For instance, in the alto aria “O Thou That Tellest Good Tidings to Zion,” the melody ascends and the dynamics increase along with the words “Lift up thine voice, lift up, be not afraid.” The melody mirrors the suggestion.
It’s the minute particulars that keep audiences and performers excited about the next performance of a masterpiece such as Messiah.
“In great music, you always find additional things, things you didn’t find before,” Farrer said. “That’s one of the great things about doing things multiple times: When you come back to it, it is just like greeting an old friend. To have the opportunity to get to come back to works has been one of the privileges in my profession.”
Living again
Bringing an important work such as Handel’s Messiah to life is an endeavor that deserves a serious amount of respect and devotion to the quality of the performance. The best bet with a work as large as Messiah is complete immersion. The Allan Hancock College Singers and the Coastal Voices have had an open door policy for each other’s rehearsals all semester long in order for members of either ensemble to get a better handle on the work.
“It’s very true in classical music that there is a standard level of performance for what is acceptable,” Lucas said. “And when you study these works, there are times when the music kind of lets you know itself.”
Maestro Farrer, when he originally programmed the Messiah, made it clear that the performance would come from the urtext, the closest representation to the composer’s original manuscript and thus intentions. The amount of coordination in procuring music both choirs and the orchestra members could use was a daunting task, but one not feared by the Philharmonic.
To also stay true to the period performance practices, the orchestra will be a standard-size Baroque orchestra, which was considerably smaller than the Classical-era orchestra of just 50 years later, and even more so than the mammoth orchestra of the Romantic era.
“The larger the orchestra, the harder it is to achieve a correct balance with the chorus,” Farrer said. “With the smaller ensemble, we can make sure we play everything correctly, but it will also make achieving a correct balance easier.”
Besides the chorus and the orchestra, Handel’s Messiah features recitatives and arias for soprano, alto, tenor, and bass soloists. The Philharmonic held auditions in September for prospective singers, having sent out notices to all the major university music programs. George Majoue, executive director of the Santa Maria Philharmonic—and the person who coordinated the auditions—said the quality of singers’ voices and their technical abilities were the deciding factors in who would perform.
“Most were just outstanding, and it came down to lyric ability, breathing techniques, the ability to do the trills and runs, and breath control was a big one,” he explained. “Some of the runs include a tremendous amount of breath control.”
The soloists selected were soprano Katherine Gerber, alto Helena von Rueden, tenor Nicholas A. Preston, and baritone Anthony Radford. They’ll each be performing several arias, which include a range of emotion and technicality requiring a serious amount of precision and talent.
“The oratorios feature more for the choruses, and the operas feature more for the soloists,” Lucas told her music history class, “and it’s very true. That’s why Messiah is so much fun for a choir, because it gives the choir just as many chances to sing and show off as the soloists.”
Something else special about performing Handel’s Messiah is that it gives choruses the chance to perform with orchestras, an experience not afforded to all choirs, big or small.
“It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sing the Messiah with the Philharmonic, and we are so glad they asked,” Nelson said.
I joined the Allan Hancock College Singers this semester knowing full well it would conflict with the rest of my busy schedule, but I made the compromise solely for the gravity of the piece and the quality of the Philharmonic Orchestra and the direction of Farrer. And, as an aspiring musical scholar, I intend to be well prepared for any future productions I might have the privilege to be involved in.
One thing non-musicians may not understand about pieces like these is that there are musicians around the world building personal relationships with not just the music but the mind and heart of the composer. Every listening or rehearsal session yields new gems that previously went unnoticed and bring the musician closer to the work. Every moment spent with the music is with the intent to then share it with an audience.
“There’s absolutely nothing like getting your fingers into the work, if you will,” Farrer said. “It’s one thing to appreciate the work from an intellectual standpoint, or from the standpoint of a listener—and we certainly need listeners—but if you’ve performed it, you have a connection to it, and there’s no other way to get that connection other than performing it.”
Regardless of how you may prefer to enjoy Handel’s Messiah—from the risers or out in the audience—the Santa Maria Philharmonic Society concert and the Coastal Voices sing-along are examples of what makes great music so special. The concerted effort of many individuals to produce something greater than what they alone can do epitomizes the spirit of togetherness the season brings.
“Fortunately, as human beings we’ve had these wonderful people, these great geniuses amongst us,” Farrer said, “but these are the folks who kind of sum up the best in human beings and the best in humanity and somehow express it through art, and we’re attracted to that.”
Contact Arts Editor Joe Payne at jpayne@santa mariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 13-20, 2012.
