Oratorio As Exegesis: E Use of the Book of Isaiah in Handel's Messiah

Biblical Interpretation Biblical Interpretation 15 (2007) 464-484 www.brill.nl/bi

Oratorio as Exegesis: e Use of the Book of Isaiah in Handel’s Messiah

Andrew Davies Mattersey Hall Graduate School

Abstract Handel’s Messiah is among the best-known musical compositions of all time, and it is also heavily dependent upon the Bible for its theme and content, thus making it an ideal source for a study of the Bible in music. In this paper I consider how Handel and his librettist Charles Jennens made use of the text of the book of Isaiah (the single most quoted biblical book in the libretto) in both the words and the music of this great oratorio, oﬀering en route some observations on the features of a musical text that need to be taken into account in ‘reading’ it in this way.

Keywords Isaiah, music, Handel, Messiah, oratorio

is paper is about two of the great icons of world culture, the Bible and Handel’s Messiah, and what they have in common. For those of us who live in the United Kingdom in particular, the link between the two is rather more than thematic. Messiah is as foundational a cultural artefact to the life of Middle England as the Bible is a religious one. To many of us, for all the alien origins of both,1 there is something partic- ularly and peculiarly English about both the Good Book and the Greatest Oratorio, and both have, at least in some sense, transformed, even as they have been transformed by, the life of our nation.

1) e oratorio is of course the product of a German-born composer ﬁrst performed in Ireland, and the world which gave us the earliest biblical traditions is a universe away from the UK culturally if not geographically.

e particular version of the Bible I have in my sights here is the most English of versions, as well—the 1611 Authorised Version or AV, which played a prominent role in the shaping of popular, as well as spiritual, culture in the United Kingdom for over three and a half cen- turies. It was to this translation, albeit mediated through the lectionar- ies of the Book of Common Prayer, that Charles Jennens turned in 1741 when he sought ‘another scripture collection’ as a libretto for a new oratorio he would have George Frideric Handel compose and ‘perform …for his own benefit in Passion Week’: Messiah.2 Without the Bible, this oratorio would have neither text nor theme, and all that, along with its broad familiarity to so many of us, makes it ideal source mate- rial for a study of the Bible in music. To cover every part of the libretto would be unwieldy and indeed impossible in a comparatively brief discussion, so I will be limiting my analysis to the oratorio’s references to just one biblical book, Isaiah. But I will not be dealing with the libretto alone. It seems to me that such a study cannot be adequately undertaken without due consider- ation of the actual music itself. Handel’s contribution to the work is in itself as significant a piece of biblical interpretation as that of Jennens, and it too is deserving of serious analysis and critical examination, so, after some methodological observations, I will conclude with a short ‘reading’ of one of the oratorio’s favourite choruses as a piece of exegesis. ere is much to be said concerning the libretto first, however.

Isaiah in Messiah: e Libretto Handel’s librettist, Jennens, disappointed with the poor preparation of the previous versions, took personal responsibility for the production of the wordbook for the London premiere of the work at Covent Gar- den in 1743.3 At that stage he took the opportunity to divide the estab-

2) Charles Jennens, Letter to Edward Holdsworth of 10 July 1741, cited by D. Bur- rows, Handel: ‘Messiah’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 11. It is interesting to note that Jennens had a commercial as well as more inspirational motive for the composition. 3) Burrows, Handel: ‘Messiah’, p. 29.