So You Want to Sing Messiah?

On concert night there will be over 100 musicians on stage. When Handel premiered the work in 1742 he had 16 boys and 16 men (we assume that means boy sopranos, and something close to an even split of altos, tenors and basses) and an orchestra comparable to ours but of period instruments with gut strings, soft brass natural trumpets,

leather drum heads, etc. I lead with this because in Handel’s time this music was quieter. Boy sopranos are coveted across music history and even today for their tone, but they have to work hard to produce something close to a forte sound. Why? They only have head voice, falsetto, to work with. I am saving my broader discussion of Messiah for the program notes, so here is a little more background concerning its performance history: 

Fast forward just a few decades to the height of Georgian England, 1787, where 800 performers gathered at Westminster Abbey to perform the work, and in Austria in 1788–1789 Mozart would re-orchestrate the work with full winds and brass, adding flutes, clarinets, horns, and trombones, though with a choir of only 12. Mozart himself did not like the changes after the fact—and one Mozart scholar even went so far as to describe them as “stucco ornaments on a marble temple.” The 19th century saw even larger performances of the work, festivals of 2,000 singers with orchestras in the hundreds. While many argue Handel would have himself augmented the orchestra given such large choirs, contemporary critics like Bernard Shaw would have sharp words against it: “Why, instead of wasting huge sums on the multitudinous dullness of a Handel Festival does not somebody set up a thoroughly rehearsed and exhaustively studied performance in St. James Hall with a chorus of 20 capable artists? Most of us would be glad to hear the work seriously performed once before we die.” A damning statement against what would only continue as Britain’s 19th and 20th century tradition of the amateur choral society.
 
Backlash would continue through the 20th century, as modern choirs like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the Royal Choral Society, and others would perform the work with large orchestra and chorus. Even church choirs would fall under attack in the cross fire, as proponents of the “tradition” of larger forces would protest the performances by “trumpery little church choirs of 20 voices of so” as the Australian The Register put it. Harpsichords had gone extinct and the efforts of modern reproductions had not get begun. likewise, the intimate spaces of their performances had gone the way of “drawing rooms compared to Albert Hall and the Crystal Palace.” Approaching modern day things continued to be polarizing … I won’t mention sing-alongs. Today, performances striving for authenticity are now usual, but it is generally agreed that there can never be a definitive version of Messiah; the same way there is for even something like the Mozart Requiem, because the surviving manuscripts contain radically different settings of many numbers, and even more importantly when it comes to Baroque music, vocal and instrumental ornamentation of the written notes is a matter of personal judgment, even for the most historically informed professionals. The Handel scholar Winton Dean has written: “There is still plenty for scholars to fight over, and more than ever for conductors to decide for themselves. Indeed if they are not prepared to grapple with the problems presented by the score they ought not to conduct it. This applies not only to the choice of versions, but to every aspect of Baroque practice, and of course there are often no final answers.”
 
I have given all of this background to say this: Octavos is a very capable choir, and with this year’s performance I am aiming for something I think many of you have already found to be more elevated than the work’s history with amateur choirs. For me, it comes down to the ability to teach the music, and the willingness to learn it. This is a two-way street, even for something as well known as Messiah, and as we have been learning together, there is plenty of the work that is not so well known, but is just as dramatic and fun to sing. At the end of the day, Handel, like many of his time, is an opera composer. This means regardless of the stage or the size of the ensemble, the drama has to be present. It takes a great deal of focus from everyone in the choir. If anything, I’ve found that the larger the choir, the more diction and vowels have to be given their due—not only for the sake of musical clarity, but of emotional clarity. I think putting this together with orchestra and soloists will be the final mark towards that goal. The scenes these choruses are part of have a whole new drama when you consider the text in the arias: Before “Hallelujah” comes “Thou Shalt Break Them with a Rod of Iron.”
 
​—Andrew
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