Sunday Classics, Christmas Day edition: "For unto us a child is born" -- the Prince of Peace

For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

-- Isaiah 9:6

Musica Sacra, Richard Westenburg, cond. RCA/BMG, recorded October 1981

by Ken

I didn't always love Messiah. Like many people, I suspect, I used to think of it as a windy old bore. Gradually I came around, but a real turning point came one day when I was visiting my friend Richard, who had a large collection of 78s and a good turntable set up for playing them (if you've never heard 78s really well reproduced, you would probably be shocked at how much sound those old grooves can contain), and I got the crazy idea of listening to at least some of Malcolm Sargent's first recording of Messiah.

No sooner had we gotten through the Overture than I was stopped cold by the Northern Irish tenor James Johnston singing the first vocal number, the recitative "Comfort ye, my people." I don't know that anyone pays much attention to it. Certainly I never did. Usually you think of it as something you go through to get to the following tenor aria, "Ev'ry valley shall be exalted." Suddenly Johnson was singing, on behalf of his God, directly to me! "Comfort ye," indeed. And then he was singing to me, as Jerusalem, "that her warfare is abolished, that her iniquity is pardoned." Whoa! And I pretty well lost it.

Now anytime I have access to a decent performance of "Comfort ye," I am readily available for having my warfare abolished and my iniquity pardoned. And gradually I've found more and more of Messiah speaking directly and personally to me.

It's always pointed out, and rightly so, that Messiah is the oddball among Handel's oratorios. The others are unstaged dramatizations of highly dramatic Old Testament-based stories, which would probably have been staged if English censorship of the time didn't forbid stage representation of biblical material. Messiah not only isn't dramatic, it has no plot. It's just a collection of Bible snippets -- most uncharacteristically for Handel drawing on the New as well as the Old Testament. It has no "definitive" edition, with regard to exactly which numbers are included and which are assigned to which voice category, because Handel tinkered with both every time he performed the piece. This allows performers tremendous leeway in putting together a performing edition.

And of course the old-style performances with a massive chorus and orchestra have given way to more and more modest performing forces. That we have a better feel for how a Handelian phrase fits together is all to the good; otherwise there has been perhaps more loss than gain in the "authenticizing" of performances, which substitute book learning for musical understanding, which is especially unfortunate in the case of Messiah, which is one of the supreme musical tours through and tributes to the human spirit.

Only the first (and longest) of Messiah's three parts, which is all related to the birth of Christ, has a specific Christmas connection, but that's enough to make it inescapable Christmas fodder. Me, I listen to it all year round, and I'm not in the least religious. For me Messiah, for all its religious references, isn't particularly religious in content. When the soprano sings, "I know that my Redeemer liveth" (and we'll be hearing an especially intimate and personal performance), I understand by "Redeemer" something outside of our own selves that can give meaning -- and yes, even redemption -- to life.

But we've gotten ahead of ourselves. Back to "Comfort ye," sung not by James Johnston but -- with his trademark intensity -- by Jon Vickers, from the slightly outrageous and extremely wonderful Messiah that Sir Thomas Beecham recorded in 1959, his third.

Part I: Comfort ye, my people (tenor recitative)

Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God; speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem; and cry unto her, that her warfare is accompllshèd, that her iniquity is pardoned. 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.

-- Isaiah 40:1-3

Jon Vickers, tenor; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, cond. (orch. Eugene Goossens). RCA/BMG, recorded 1959

Now we're just going to hear some favorite excerpts from Messiah.


Part II: He was despisèd (alto aria)

Thanks to its quite slow tempo, even in these days of super-hopped-up "authentic" baroque tempos, "He was despisèd" performed complete is almost surely Handel's longest aria -- it's hard to get through the thing in less than 10-12 minutes, and never mind that the entire text of the "A" section of this A-B-A aria, which accounts for most of its length, consists of 15 (count 'em) words. Handel looked at those 15 words, and something happened in the wiring of his brain.

Not surprisingly, the aria poses an enormous challenge to the singer to sustain and keep animated. As a result, many perormances wear out their welcome long before they're done. However, in a worthy performance, it's hard not to think that this is Handel's greatest aria, and one of the greatest written by anybody. Our soloist here, the Czech mezzo Marjana Lipovšek, gives a pretty darned good performance.

He was despisèd and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.
He gave His back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. He hid not His face from shame and spitting.

-- Isaiah 53:3, 50:6

Marjana Lipovšek, mezzo-soprano; Vienna Concentus Musicus, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, cond. Teldec, recorded live, November 1982

We're going to hear another performance of "He was despisèd," from Sir Malcolm Sargent's third Messiah, made the year before Sir Thomas's. (Sir Malcolm would go on to record yet a fourth in 1965.) It's an older style of performance, but mostly I wanted you to hear how beautifully the aria sits in a true contralto voice, with its deeper, richer sound. (Note that this performance is noticeably shorter, only six minutes! Sir Malcolm simply omitted the "B" section and the repeat of "A.")


Monica Sinclair, contralto; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded 1958


Part II, conclusion: Hallelujah (chorus)

Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.

-- Revelation 19:6

The Kingdom of this world is become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever more.

-- Revelation 11:15

King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.

-- Revelation 19:16

Royal Choral Society, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Owain Arwel Hughes, cond. IMP, recorded February 1994


Part III: I know that my Redeemer liveth (soprano aria)

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.

-- Job 19-25-26

For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep.

-- I Corinthians 15:20

Sylvia McNair, soprano; Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner, cond. Philips, recorded live in Dublin, April 1992, commemorating the 250th anniversary of Messiah


Part III: The trumpet shall sound (bass aria)

The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be rais'd incorruptible, and we shall be chang'd. For this corruptible must put on incorruption and this corruptible must put on immortality.

-- I Corinthians 15:52-53

Samuel Ramey, bass; Larry Weeks, trumpet; Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Davis, cond. EMI, recorded c 1986

Again we're going to hear a second performance, and again it's from the 1958 Sargent-EMI recording -- partly because it's such a lovely performance, by the sadly short-lived Canadian baritone James Milligan (1928-1961) -- but also, again, because it gives us a distinctly different voice, the higher-lying baritone rather than a deeper, darker bass like Ramey's. In Handel's time the baritone voice hadn't yet split off from the bass, Milligan would probably have been thought of as some sort of "high bass." But it's a distinctly different sound. (As with "He was despisèd," this "Trumpet shall sound" is significantly shorter, for the same reason: Sargent lops off the "B" section and the repeat of the "A.")


James Milligan, baritone; Alan Stringer, trumpet; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Malcolm Sargent, cond. EMI, recorded 1958


ENCORE: HALLELUJAH, SIR THOMAS!

For those 1958-59 Messiah remakes, both Sir Malcolm Sargent and Sir Thomas Beecham provided extremely interesting essays built around their long and deep acquaintance with the piece, which luckily have been carried over to CD (at least the editions I have). Both were acutely aware that the rising winds of baroque-era scholarship were changing the perception of how Handel's music should be played.

Sir Malcolm began his essay: "I have known, loved, rehearsed and performed the Messiah for nearly forty years -- a photographic facsimile of the original manuscript has been my musical bible. I am still conscious that the very best of me is not worthy of this masterpiece." Sir Thomas, meanwhile, was able to write as late as 1959:

In view of the comparative neglect of Handel's music today, it might seem difficult to substantiate a valid claim for him to be numbered among the few supremely great Masters of music. In my memoirs, A Mingled Chime, I wrote, "Since his time mankind has heard no music written for voices which can even feebly rival his for grandeur of build and tone, nobility and tenderness of melody, scholastic skill and ingenuity and inexhaustible variety of effect." The justice of this opinion can easily be confirmed by an honest comparison between his choral writing and that of any other composer from Palestrina down to the present day. In this domain he has no serious rival.

It seems only appropriate to give Sir Thomas the last musical word:

Messiah: Part II, conclusion: Hallelujah (chorus)


Royal Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, cond. (orch. Eugene Goossens). RCA/BMG, recorded 1959

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