Tag Archive for: Handel: Messiah

Händel Messiah Concert spirituel Banner EN
Meinrad Walter

A Musical and Literary Program for Advent

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By leaning into the model of the French concert spirituel, Handel’s universally beloved Messiah, which generally weighs in at around three hours, can be transformed into the central focus of a tailor-made pasticcio for the Advent season. When selected excerpts from the oratorio are combined with literary and liturgical readings, along with congregational singing, the result is a compelling one-hour program, both engaging and much more economical to produce.

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English Music Festivals Banner EN
Barbara Mohn

It all started with Handel…

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Georg Frideric Handel is the creator of the English oratorio. When he first staged his Esther as a religious drama without scenic action at the King’s Theatre in London in 1732, it marked the beginning of an unparalleled success story. Opera audiences were so enthusiastic about the new genre that from that time onwards Handel, who was not only a composer but also a theater manager, filled his opera houses with oratorios based on biblical themes. Performances of the Messiah and later of other oratorios too for charitable purposes were one of the central driving forces behind the development of the great music festivals that were held from the early eighteenth century onwards.

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Händel in London
Barbara Mohn

In Handel’s footsteps through London

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When George Frideric Handel crossed the English Channel the first time in 1710, London was enjoying a huge economic upturn. The building boom altered the cityscape of the second largest city in Europe, with almost 630,000 inhabitants, the financial market grew and experienced the first stockmarket crash, the social contrasts were stark, but a simple musician such as Handel could die a rich man. In the midst of the hustle and bustle of today’s metropolis, we can still set out on a walk in the footsteps of Handel.

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Jürgen Budday

Handel’s English oratorios

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The period in which the above-mentioned works were written was a very fruitful phase in Handel’s creative output. He composed the ode Alexander’s Feast in 1735/36, Israel in Egypt and Saul in 1738/39, and Messiah followed in 1741/42. Furthermore, during this period he composed not only the oratorio L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato (1740), but also a further eleven (!) operas, including what is probably his best-known, Xerxes, and – as his very last opera of all – Deidamia in 1741.

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