A hopeful holiday musical greeting from G. F. Handel -- and another from L. van Beethoven

HANDEL: Messiah: No. 2, Accompagnato, "Comfort ye"

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.

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

by Ken

Last night ( For Christmas Eve, we hark unto the openings of Berlioz's Childhood of Christ and Handel's Messiah") I took a stab at explaining how it came that, given this year's unusual three-day Christmas "arc," I had the idea of resurrecting a three-day musical post from Christmas 2011, and how it wasn't actually possible, as I'd first hoped, to simply paste the old posts into new blogfiles, but that that provided an opportunity to do various sorts of updating and expanding for the 2016 version.

One of the problems, with which I had to bore you but have to, just a little, is an infuriating technical incompatibility between our posts of bygone times and current ones, and in fact for the intended second and third parts of the sequence the problem has proved insurmountable -- tonight's continuation of last night's post had to be entirely typed from scratch, and I don't think tomorrow's planned resurrection of my composite performance of the whole of Part I of Messiah is going to be impossible for tomorrow's "third day" of Christmas ("Christmas observed").

As promised last night, when we listened to the opening tenor solos of Handel's Messiah and Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ, including hearing both sung by the fondly remembered Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda, we're returning to the Messiah vocal opening (following the orchestral Overture, that is). Tonight, as I laid out the agenda in 2011, "I'm going to be resurrecting my account of how I first came to hear a tenor singing it singing directly and personally to me." And in addition:

As it happens, there's another musical excerpt, by coincidence or otherwise also written for tenor, which under the right circumstances can give me this same sensation of its composer reaching out -- through the agency of this singer -- and offering hopefulness. So I thought we would start out once again by hearing the two excerpts sung by the same tenor.

From the choral finale of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony:

Happily, happily, as his suns fly
across the heavens' splendid expanse,
run, brothers, your course,
joyfully, like a hero toward victory.

OUR HARD-WORKING TENOR WELL-WISHER TONIGHT IS --

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For Christmas Eve, we hark unto the openings of Berlioz's "Childhood of Christ" and Handel's "Messiah"

In the Sunday Classics era, Christmastime provided a bountiful musical opportunity. Since 2016 brings us a "three-day Christmas" -- Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Christmas holiday celebrated -- I thought I would dip back to 2011, when Sunday Classics had a three-day sequence that began with the openings of Berlioz's oratorio L'Enfance du Christ (The Childhood of Christ) and Handel's eternal Messiah, then zoomed in on that opening tenor solo of Messiah, and finally expanded to encompass the whole of Part I, the only one of Messiah's three parts that is in fact Christmas-connected.

The original plan, of course, was just to paste the contents of the three original posts into new blogfiles. Alas, for all sorts of reasons that wasn't possible. Behind the scenes, for starters, all of the audio clips, every one of them had to be reformatted -- that is, once I figured out how to reformat them. For that matter, substantial portions of the texts of these posts had to be reformatted thanks to the Googlified software's fondness for eating up line breaks in older posts. Then, as noted below, a video clip had disappeared. On the bright side, my MIA-in-2011 CD copy of Colin Davis's first Messiah recording (the good one) has resurfaced, and will be pressed into heavy service on Monday. And on and on. The upshot is that, while I've tricked to stick as close as possible to the 2011 posts as possible, a fair amount of the 2016 versions is not only updated but brand new.

In the manger at this time Jesus had just been born,
but no wonder had yet made him known.
And already the powerful were trembling;
already the weak were hoping.
Everyone was waiting.

Now learn, Christians, what a monstrous crime
was suggested to the King of the Jews by terror.
And the celestial warning that in their humble stable
was sent to the parents of Jesus by the Lord.


Michel Sénéchal (t), Narrator; Orchestre des Concerts Colonne, Pierre Dervaux, cond. Adès, recorded 1959

Jean Giraudeau (t), Narrator; Paris Conservatory Orchestra, André Cluytens, cond. Pathé/Vox, recorded in the early '50s

Cesare Valletti (t), Narrator; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Charles Munch, cond. RCA, recorded Dec. 23-24, 1956

Anthony Rolfe Johnson (t), Narrator; English Chamber Orchestra, Philip Ledger, cond. ASV, recorded 1986

NOTE: These audio files were made, not for the 2011 post being revived here but for a later post. Since we're not returning to that later post anyway, I've folded these performances of the Opening Narration in here to replace a now-vanished video clip of the early numbers of L'Enfance du Christ. For more about the "new" clips of the Opening Narration, see below.

by Ken

Don't tell Bill O'Reilly, but I'm not a Christmas person. People don't come much more secular than me. But there are things about the Christmas season that I respond to, and Sunday Classics actually has several Christmas traditions. We do Tchaikovsky, and in particular the ballets -- a tradition carried forward with last week's first-ever Sunday Classics complete Nutcracker. [This was 2011, remember. The DWT complete Nutcracker became a mini-tradition itself for a couple of years.] And we do two altogether extraordinary works, which we've been prodding and poking at for years now: Handel's Messiah and Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ (The Childhood of Christ).

As it happens, both Messiah (following its overture) and L'Enfance kick off with tenor solos, each of which is for me one of the most meaningful, most powerful pieces of music I know. We have, in fact, dealt with both of them in past years, and we're going to be dealing with them again this week and next. But for tonight, I thought it might be fun to hear them sung by the same tenor.

Of course there wouldn't be much point if the tenor wasn't much good. But it occurred to me that we could accomplish this with a pretty good tenor indeed, Nicolai Gedda -- not one of my very favorite singers, but a good one, with a high degree of stylistic adaptability and and ability to sing effectively in more languages than any singer I can think of. (You'll notice that in "Comfort ye," for the phrase we normally hear as "saith your God," he carefully and precisely sings, each time, "sayeth two syllables] your God.") I don't know whether it qualifies as irony that for this quintessentially English and quintessentially French music, we're turning -- where else? -- to a Swede. These are both highly accomplished performances, which we're going to hear in the click-through.

2016 UPDATE: In 2011 there was actually a second week of "Christmas" posts, in which, having listened more closely to the opening tenor solo and then the whole of Part I of Messiah, which we're going to do again tomorrow and Monday, respectively, we proceeded to do the same with L'Enfance du Christ; this year, though, I'm afraid we're going no farther into L'Enfance than the Opening Narration. In the click-through -- new for 2016 -- I'm going to say a little about our opening assortment of performances of the Opening Narration of L'Enfance. 

We can proceed just as soon as you click through!


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Sunday Classics snapshots: Comfort ye

Tenor James Johnston's "Comfort ye" recording was an
inspiration to me, but we're still not going to hear it.

"I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars. You have to heal the wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds."

-- Pope Francis, in an August 2013 interview,
quoted in a new NYRB blogpost by Garry Wills

"Cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned"

Recitative
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. 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.
Aria
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.

Nicolai Gedda, tenor; Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, cond. EMI, recorded 1965

Jon Vickers, tenor; Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Sir Ernest MacMillan, cond. RCA, recorded c1953

Jon Vickers, tenor; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, cond. RCA, recorded 1959

[in German] Fritz Wunderlich, tenor; Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, Heinz Mendes, cond. Live performance, Mar. 20, 1959

"Thou who art good and kind, rescue me from everlasting fire"

I groan as one who is accused;
guilt reddens my cheek;
Thy supplicant, Thy supplicant spare, O God.
Thou who absolved Mary,
and harkened to the thief,
and who hast given me hope,
and who hast given me hope.
My prayers are worthless,
but Thou who art good and kind,
rescue me from everlasting fire.
With Thy sheep give me a place,
and from the goats keep me separate,
placing me at Thy right hand.

Nicolai Gedda, tenor; Philharmonia Orchestra, Carlo Maria Giulini, cond. EMI, recorded 1963-64

Jon Vickers, tenor; New Philharmonia Orchestra, Sir John Barbirolli, cond. EMI, recorded April 1970

Fritz Wunderlich, tenor; South German Radio Symphony Orchestra, Helmut Müller-Kray, cond. Live performance, Nov. 2, 1960

by Ken

Last Sunday I offered a post called "Garry Wills, contemplating Pope Francis and his critics, says there are 'two forms of Christianity now on offer' -- and it's up to Catholics to choose" which began with the quote from the pope that I've placed atop this post as well, since it is rather obviously the inspiration for today's pair of musical "snapshots" -- pieces that are both intensely personal to me, and that we've dwelled upon at some length in past posts.

Fresh from the challenge, in the first of these "snapshot" posts, "Rosina I and Rosina II," of finding a singer, namely Victoria de los Angeles, to put in the lead-off slot singing both Rossini's young Rosina (in The Barber of Seville) and Mozart's only slightly older but sadly way more mature Rosina (aka Countess Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro), I was pleased to come up with our three tenors singing the similarly improbable combo of the opening vocal number of Handel's Messiah and the heart-rending "Ingemisco" from the "Dies Irae" of Verdi's Requiem. We've actually heard all of the above performances of "Comfort ye" and "Ev'ry valley" (and once again I couldn't resist including both Vickers recordings); I just needed to add the Gedda and Vickers "Ingemisco" performances.


OF COURSE WE'RE NOT GOING TO LET IT REST THERE!

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Sunday Classics, Christmas Day edition: A composite performance of the whole of Part I of Handel's "Messiah"

As we're going to hear Kiri Te Kanawa close out Part I of Messiah, we have her here repeating her 1981 Royal Wedding triumph with Handel's "Let the bright seraphim" from Samson with James Levine conducting in 1985.

by Ken

As I tried to convey in last night's special Christmas Eve edition of Sunday Classics, it was through a sudden connection to the opening vocal number, the tenor accompagnato "Comfort ye, my people" (which we previewed, along with the Opening Narration of Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ, Friday night), that I began to take Messiah personally. Today we're going to hear the whole of Part I, and by way of introduction I'm resurrecting something I wrote in the 2009 Sunday Classics Messiah post:

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.

FOR OUR COMPOSITE PERFORMANCE
OF PART I OF MESSIAH, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics, Christmas Eve edition: A hopeful holiday greeting from G. F. Handel -- and one from L. Van Beethoven

HANDEL: Messiah: No. 2. Accompagnato, "Comfort ye"
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.
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

No. 3. Air, "Every valley shall be exalted"
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.

-- Isaiah 40:4

by Ken

In last night's preview, we heard the Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda sing both the first vocal numbers of Handel's Messiah (the acccompagnato "Comfort ye" and the air "Every Valley") and the little prologue to Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ." Tonight for Christmas Eve we're going to be focusing on that Handel recitative, "Comfort ye," and I'm going to be resurrecting my account of how I first came to hear a tenor singing it singing directly and personally to me.

As it happens, there's another musical excerpt, by coincidence or otherwise also written for tenor, which under the right circumstances can give me this same sensation of its composer reaching out -- through the agency of this singer -- and offering hopefulness. So I thought we would start out once again by hearing the two excerpts sung by the same tenor.


from the choral finale of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony:

Happily, as his suns fly
across the heavens' splendid expanse,
run, brothers, your course,
joyfully, like a hero toward victory.

WHO'S OUR TENOR? WE'VE ALSO GOT MORE OF
HANDEL'S "COMFORT YE" WHEN YOU CLICK HERE

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[12/24/2011] Christmas Eve edition: A hopeful holiday greeting from G. F. Handel -- and one from L. Van Beethoven (continued)

AND OUR MULTITASKING TENOR TONIGHT IS . . .

Jon Vickers

As far as I know, Vickers recorded both Messiah and the Beethoven Ninth Symphony twice, and in a moment we're going to hear both recordings of both our excerpts. For the record, the performances we just heard before the click-through were in both cases from the later recordings: the 1959 Messiah with Sir Thomas Beecham and the 1978 Beethoven Ninth with Lorin Maazel.


BUT FIRST, LET ME TRY TO EXPLAIN AGAIN HOW
"COMFORT YE" CAME TO MEAN SO MUCH TO ME

In a 2009 Christmas Day edition of Sunday Classics on Messiah (" 'For unto us a child is born' -- the Prince of Peace"), I wrote a bit about my history with the piece as a whole and in particular the opening tenor accompagnato (or accompanied recitative), "Comfort ye." I don't know how well it conveyed what I meant, but I doubt that I can do it better, so here's what I wrote back then:

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.

As I suggested before the click-through, I've had the same sort of experience with the big tenor solo from the finale of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, when I've encountered the right kind of performance while in the right sort of mood -- usually one where I'm in considerable need of bucking up.

With that background, let's turn the floor back to Jon Vickers.

HANDEL: Messiah: No. 2. Accompagnato, tenor, "Comfort ye, my people"; No. 3. Air, "Every valley shall be exalted"

Accompagnato
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.
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

Air
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.

-- Isaiah 40:4

Jon Vickers, tenor; Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Sir Ernest MacMillan, cond. RCA/EMI, recorded c1952
Jon Vickers, tenor; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, cond. (orch. Goossens). RCA/BMG, recorded 1959

from the finale of BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125

Happily, as his suns fly
across the heavens' splendid expanse,
run, brothers, your course,
joyfully, like a hero toward victory.

Jon Vickers, tenor; London Bach Choir, London Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Monteux, cond. Westminster/MCA/DG, recorded June 1962
Jon Vickers, tenor; Cleveland Orchestra Chorus, Cleveland Orchestra, Lorin Maazel, cond. CBS/Sony, recorded Oct. 13-15, 1978

A SUNDAY CLASSICS CHRISTMAS EVE BONUS

To hear the complete performances of the finale of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony from which these extracts are extracted, click here.

IN TOMORROW'S CHRISTMAS DAY EDITION OF SUNDAY CLASSICS --

As I mentioned last night, we're going to have a composite performance of the whole of Part I of Messiah.


RETURN TO THE BEGINNING OF THE POST

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Sunday Classics, Christmas Eve edition: "Comfort ye"

The Mormon Tabernacle Choir announces the joyful news, "For unto us a child is born," from Part I of Messiah.

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]

[No. 12] Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded 1958-59

by Ken

I was startled myself to discover that our first Handel-Berlioz Messiah-L'Enfance du Christ Christmas was all the way back in December 2006! It didn't occur to me to do it again in 2007, but in 2008 we had a brief Christmas Eve Messiah post and a Christmas Day L'Enfance du Christ post; then last year it was reversed -- L'Enfance du Christ for Christmas Eve and Messiah for Christmas Day. In addition, in the course of our Maureen Forrester remembrance this past July we heard the great contralto sing most of "He was despisèd" from Messiah.

Once again I thought we'd go straight to the heart of the matter and start with the chorus "For unto us a child is born," and once again, note the way Handel emphasizes, in the roster of names the newborn child will have, "Prince of Peace."

Mostly we're going to concentrate this year on the big bass excerpts from Messiah. We're doubling up with two fine basses, and we're going to have a lot of lovely singing, but mixed in is one truly breathtaking performance.

For now, though, we're going to start, resume, with the very beginning, almost -- we're skipping the Overture to go straight to the first musical numbers, the tenor recitative "Comfort ye, my people" and aria "Every valley shall be exalted." Note that the numbers included in brackets for all our Messiah selections are from the Eulenburg score edited by Brian Priestman. I've included them simply to give you an idea how the selections fit together, which we're really not going into today.

I've mentioned before that the little "Comfort ye" is one of my most deeply loved pieces of music, and I've already told the story of listening, on my friend Richard's 78-rpm copy, to the opening numbers of Sir Malcolm Sargent's first recording of Messiah and being simply overwhelmed by tenor James Johnston's seemingly singing directly to me about my warfare being accomplished and my iniquity pardoned. It was the beginning of my understanding that in setting this curious assortment of biblical texts, Handel wasn't trying to strike religious poses -- he found music that made the ideas embodied in the verses human and deeply personal.

Now this isn't James Johnston we're going to hear sing "Comfort ye" and "Every valley," but I've picked (I think) a pretty special recording, by a very familiar -- and distinctive-voiced -- performer who should be readily recognizable, but perhaps may not be. Just for fun, I'm not going to identify him till the click-through.

HANDEL: Messiah

Part I, Recitative and aria (tenor), "Comfort ye, my people" . . . "Every valley shall be exalted" [Nos. 1-2]

Recitative
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. 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]

Aria
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.

[Isaiah 40:4]

TO FIND OUT WHO OUR TENOR IS AND HEAR THOSE MESSIAH
BASS EXCERPTS, PLUS OTHER MESSIAH GOODIES, CLICK HERE

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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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For Christmas Eve, savor the true miracle: "For unto us a child is born"

"For unto us a child is born" ends Part I of Handel's Messiah.

by Ken

People keep telling me I shouldn't worry so much about the quality of the performances I put up here, but I know that this anemic, pipsqueaky rendering doesn't capture much of the sense of wonder, triumph, and miraculous excitement that Handel captured in the announcement: "For unto us a child is born." Really, Handel gives us the feeling that that is the miracle: that a child is born (and a son given). Even when this particular child's future responsibilities are set out ("Wonderful counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father), note how Handel italicizes the additional role: "the Prince of Peace."

Still, it's better than the other performances I found online before I gave up searching, having discovered how much worse I could do -- namely, the most recent recording by Sir Colin Davis, in the LSO Live series, which reduces the piece to limp, soggy time-beating, creating no movement at all until it gets loud, and then it merely gets loud. It's the kind of performance that leads people to think, as I confess I once did, that it's just tendentious, churchy folderol.

(Really shocking, considering that some 40 years ago the younger Colin Davis made one of the most enduring, vital recordings of Messiah, also with the LSO. It's been reissued as an inexpensive Philips "twofer" set, which I can still recommend highly as a basic Messiah recording. Davis even did a pretty decent remake for Philips in Munich. Now this.)

Well, at least this clip allows you to follow along with the words and music. Merry Christmas and season's greetings to all.


COMING UP TOMORROW: MUSIC FOR CHRISTMAS DAY

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[12/24/2010] Christmas Eve edition: "Comfort ye" (continued)

Our not-such-a-mystery tenor (a bit older here!)

Here's what we're going to do. We have here first the recording we just heard on the other side of the click-through, labeled (1), along with another recording, the one labeled (2), which in fact we've also already heard, in last year's Messiah post -- at least the "Comfort ye" recitative; this year we hear the aria as well.

HANDEL: Messiah: Part I, Recitative and aria (tenor), "Comfort ye, my people" . . . "Every valley shall be exalted" [Nos. 1-2]
(1)

(2)

(1) Jon Vickers, tenor; Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Sir Ernest MacMillan, cond. RCA/EMI, recorded c1952
(2) Jon Vickers, tenor; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham, cond. (orch. Goossens). RCA/BMG, recorded 1959


MESSIAH THROUGH THE BASS'S EYES

The American bass-baritone Donald Gramm made so few recordings that I rather cherish this Messiah recorded for Book of the Month Club's Classics Record Library. (Yes, BOMC did stuff like this back then.) While much of this music could legitimately be treeated in more dynamic, proclamatory fashion than either Gramm or the lovely bass Franz Crass (in Karl Richter's German-language Messiah) does, I find the recitative "For behold, darkness shall cover the earth" and aria "The people who walk in darkness" spellbinding.

Part I, Recitative and aria (bass or alto), "Thus saith the Lord" . . . "But who may abide the day of His coming" [Nos. 4-5]

Recitative
Thus saith the Lord, the Lord of Hosts: Yet once a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land, and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come.

[Haggai 2:6-7]

The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant whom ye delight in, behold, He shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts.

[Malachi 3:1]

Aria
But who may abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth?
For He is like a refiner's fire.
But who may abide &c.

[Malachi 3:2]

Donald Gramm, bass-baritone; Zimbler Sinfonietta, Thompson Stone, cond. (Boston Handel and Haydn Society). BOMC Classics Record Library, recorded c1957
[in German] Franz Crass, bass (in the recitative); Marga Höffgen, contralto (in the aria); Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, cond. DG, recorded June 1964

Part I, Recitative and aria (bass), "For behold, darkness shall cover the earth" . . . "The people that walked in darkness" [Nos. 10-11]

Recitative
For behold, darkness shall cover the earth and gross darkness the people. But the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to Thy light and kings to the brightness of Thy rising.

[Isaiah 60:2-3]

Aria
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. And they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.

[Isaiah 9:2]

Donald Gramm, bass-baritone; Zimbler Sinfonietta, Thompson Stone, cond. (Boston Handel and Haydn Society). BOMC Classics Record Library, recorded c1957
[in German] Franz Crass, bass; Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, cond. DG, recorded June 1964

Part II, Aria (bass), "Why do the nations so furiously rage together?" [No. 38]

Aria
Why do the nations so furiously rage together, and why do the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth rise up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed.

[Psalm 2:1-2]

Donald Gramm, bass-baritone; Zimbler Sinfonietta, Thompson Stone, cond. (Boston Handel and Haydn Society). BOMC Classics Record Library, recorded c1957
[in German] Franz Crass, bass; Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, cond. DG, recorded June 1964

Part III, Aria and recitative (bass), "Behold, I tell you a mystery" . . . "The trumpet shall sound" [Nos. 45-46]

Recitative
Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

[I Corinthians 15:51-52]

Aria
The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changèd.

[I Corinthians 15:53]

Donald Gramm, bass-baritone; Roger Voisin, trumpet; Zimbler Sinfonietta, Thompson Stone, cond. (Boston Handel and Haydn Society). BOMC Classics Record Library, recorded c1957
[in German] Franz Crass, bass; Maurice André, trumpet; Munich Bach Orchestra, Karl Richter, cond. DG, recorded June 1964


FOR ME MESSIAH ISN'T A RELIGIOUS WORK BUT IS "CHRISTIAN"
IN ITS DEEP HUMANITY -- UNLIKE MODERN CRAP CHRISTIANITY

It's always pointed out how utterly atypical of Handel's huge output of oratorios Messiah. All the others are versions of stories of one sort or another drawn from the Old Testament, works that would probably have been staged in Handel's time if stage representation of biblical subjects had been allowed in England. Messiah has no plot, and draws on both the New and the Old Testament.

As I've already said, for me there's nothing notably religious about Messiah. It treats the deeply human values of Jesus in humanistic terms. Near the start of Part II we hear the longest and greatest musical number in Messiah, the alto aria "He was despisèd," and it's hard not to think that Jesus today would be the same reviled outsider today that the alto recalls.

Last year we heard a lovely performance by the Czech mezzo Marjana Lipovšek. Now we hear first the higher, lighter mezzo of the Australian Yvonne Minton, and then, in an appropriately more drawn-out performance, the deeper, more contralto-ish mezzo of the American Florence Quivar.

Part II, Aria (alto), "He was despisèd" [No. 21]

He was despisèd and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acqainted with grief.

[Isaiah 53:3]

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 50:6]

Yvonne Minton, mezzo-soprano; English Chamber Orchestra, Johannes Somary, cond. Vanguard, recorded July 1970Florence Quivar, mezzo-soprano; Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Davis, cond. EMI, recorded c1986

AND HOW ELSE COULD WE CONCLUDE . . .

. . . but by going back to the climax of Part II for the ever-familiar and ever-rousing "Hallelujah Chorus" [No. 42]?

Hallelujah: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Hallelujah! The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever, Hallelujah! King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, and He shall reign for ever and ever, Hallelujah!

[Revelations 19:6; 11:15; 19:16]

Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, recorded 1958-59


RETURN TO THE BEGINNING OF THE POST

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