A holiday tradition in our house is to listen through the complete Messiah every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year, the tradition was heightened by my participating in a production of the Christmas portion of Messiah (plus the Hallelujah Chorus, de rigeur) as harpsichordist and director of one of three choirs which combined for the production. I have often thought about the particular combination of Charles Jennens’ specific selections from Scripture with Handel’s musical illustrations, and it seemed appropriate to share a few of these reflections with everyone as we enter the Christmas season.
A disclaimer: I am not a musicologist, nor a theologian, nor a historian. These are merely my personal reactions to Messiah as a musician and a Christian, and are certainly not meant to be taken as some kind of comprehensive statement of “ultimate meaning” or of the “original intent” of Jennens and Handel, or indeed of eighteenth-century aesthetics. That said, one surely cannot find a more timeless topic than the story of God’s redemption of mankind through His incarnation, suffering, death, and ascension. For me, Handel’s illumination of this story through music is the crowning achievement of Western music. Fully unpacking that statement would require a whole book, examining what music is, how is says what it does, and how other great masterpieces come near, but never eclipse, the continual relevance of Handel’s Messiah.
Introduction
Majora canamus [Virgil, Eclogue IV]
And without Controversy, great is the Mystery of Godliness: God was manifested in the Flesh, justified by the Spirit, seen of Angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory.
In whom are hid all the Treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge.
[I Timothy 3:16; Colossians 2:3]
These words, originally printed in the wordbooks for performances of Messiah in Handel’s day, are included in the preface of Watkins Shaw’s famous edition of Messiah. “Majora canamus” refers to the phrase “paulo majora canamus,” “let us sing of more elevated things.”
No. 1: Overture
Handel begins his oratorio with a solemn B-minor “French overture,” an instrumental piece divided into a slow introduction and a fast conclusion. The combination of B minor with the “grave” tempo marking [calling for music of the slowest and heaviest character] tells us, “here is something very serious indeed.” B minor, not a particularly common key in Baroque times, tends to be found in works of heightened solemnity or seriousness, often combined with periods of intense struggle. Think of Bach’s B-minor Mass, his own “French Overture” for keyboard, and the epic B-minor prelude and fugue from the first volume of the Well-Tempered Clavier, as well as Haydn’s (and later Chopin’s and Liszt’s) B-minor piano sonatas.
When I think of the function of this piece as a prelude to the story of Christ, it seems that Handel is here portraying the fallen condition of humanity prior to Christ’s first coming. We have darkness, a feeling of being weighed down, and (in the quicker “allegro moderato” section) a sense of striving for something upward only to be continually frustrated by the inability to reach closure. We end up precisely where we started, in the darkness and “shadow of death” (Isaiah 9:2).
Nos. 2-4: Recitative - “Comfort ye;” Aria - “Ev’ry valley shall be exalted;” Chorus - “And the glory of the Lord”
Isaiah 40:1-5
”Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: [for she hath received of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.] The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”
(It should go without saying that all Scripture references here are from the King James Version, or the “Authorized Version” as it was known in Handel’s day.)
From the darkness of B minor we suddenly move to E major, with gently repeated chords giving the effect of a bright calm and, well, “comfort.” E major is among the brightest keys possible in Baroque times, being about as far up on the circle of fifths as one could get without some really adventurous tuning (particularly in an ensemble setting). Later composers liked to reference E major as a realm of serenity and light - for Liszt it was the key of divine love (as opposed to its corollary on the flat side of the circle of fifths, A-flat major, the key of human love), for Beethoven the key of the op. 109 piano sonata, and for Chopin and Rachmaninoff the key of the youthful and romantic slow movements of their first and second concertos, respectively.
The text repeats the idea of “comfort” three times, of the “warfare” or struggle of God’s people being completed, at an end, having served its purpose. It is interesting that Jennens omits the line about receiving double from the Lord for the sins of the people, perhaps as a way of unifying the entire structure of these first few numbers with a mood of reassurance. Setting the first four verses as a recitative and aria for tenor gives us a direct, powerful, even heroic sense of prophetic proclamation, and also gives Handel many opportunities to showcase his talent for word painting - the highlighting of “cry,” “iniquity,” “crieth,” and “highway” in the recitative and the opposition of “crooked” and “plain” in the aria are just a few examples.
The valleys and mountains here are seem to me to represent several things at once, as many biblical images seem to do. On a personal level, we often speak of mountains and valleys as representing various high and low points in our lives; here both high and low points are seen as obstacles to a clear path for God to visit us. Geographically, of course, mountains and valleys are obstacles to travel, and were much more so in ancient times than us moderns can possibly imagine. Here the coming of the Messiah will clear a path for His people to visit him (sort of the reverse of the previous image). Finally, the opposition of high and low also reflects societal divisions - the Messiah will bring together rich and poor, humbling those who think of their riches as signifying God’s approval of their self-righteousness, and comforting those who think that their poverty reflects God’s judgement of their sinfulness. St. Luke expands on this theme throughout his account of the Gospel, often showing Jesus challenging the rich and comforting the poor, countering a common belief at the time that prosperity showed that you were living righteously, and poverty and disease showed that you were living sinfully.
The chorus enters to sum up this excerpt from Isaiah, acting as the voice of “all flesh” that will see the Lord’s glory together. This references both the universal nature of Christ’s ministry (Galatians 3:28) and the universal and particular judgment we shall all undergo at His second coming. Musically, Handel sets the opening line of verse 5 (“and the glory of the Lord”) with two elements of absolute stability and certainty - the tonic, or home, triad in A major (mi-do-so; C#-A-E) and an ascending scale connecting to the next higher tonic note (la-la-ti-do; F#-F#-G#-A). The beginning and the end, the “Alpha and Omega,” are obvious and clear, “for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.” And just in case you didn’t get the point, Handel hammers it home with seven repeated notes on “for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it” as each part of the choir has its turn. This opening segment of Messiah ends with the traditional “Amen” or “plagal” cadence reiterating “hath spoken it,” as a formal confirmation of the prophetic words.