Portrait of George Frideric Handel (c. 1726–28) by Balthasar Denner (1685–1749). Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia (1685–1749). Denner Balthasar by 1726–28) (c. Handel Frideric George of Portrait Saturday, December 10, 2016, 8pm Zellerbach Hall The Choir of Trinity Wall Street Trinity Baroque Orchestra Messiah music by George Frideric Handel libretto compiled from Holy Scripture by Charles Jennens the Choir of trinity Wall Street trinity Baroque orchestra Soloists from the Choir Julian Wachner, conductor The Choir of Trinity Wall Street SOPRANO TENOR elizabeth Bates eric Dudley Sarah Brailey Andrew Fuchs megan Chartrand Brian Giebler mellissa Hughes timothy Hodges linda lee Jones Scott mello molly netter tommy Wazelle tanya roberts elena Williamson BASS Paul An ALTO Christopher Dylan Herbert melissa Attebury Steven Hrycelak luthien Brackett tim Krol tim Keeler thomas mcCargar Clifton massey edmund milly timothy Parsons Jonathan Woody Trinity Baroque Orchestra VIOLIN 1 VIOLA ORGAN robert mealy, concertmaster Jessica troy, principal Avi Stein Beth Wenstrom Kyle miller Claire Jolivet Daniel elyar HARPSICHORD Katie Hyun Alissa Smith James Kennerley Chloe Fedor marie Daniels Jeremy rhizor OBOE Abigail Karr VIOLONCELLO Geoffrey Burgess, principal theresa Salomon ezra Seltzer, principal Kristin olson James Wilson VIOLIN 2 Katie rietman BASSOON Francis liu, principal Sarah Stone Andrew Schwartz, principal tatiana Daubek Arnie tanimoto Clayton Zeller-townson marika Holmqvist Dongmyung Ahn BASS TRUMPET noémy Gagnon-lafrenais Douglas Balliett, principal John thiessen, principal maureen murchie robert nairn Samuel Jones Wen Yang TIMPANI Daniel mallon PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES A Fine Entertainment: Handel’s Messiah “The whole is beyond any thing I had a notion of until I Read and heard it. It seems to be a Spe cies of Musick dif - ferent from any other, and this is particularly remark able of it. That tho’ the Com po sition is very Master ly and artificial, yet the Harmony is So great and open, as to please all who have Ears & will hear, learned & unlearn’d….” he Bishop of elphin’s rapturous review of tMes siah’s Dublin pre- miere points out how imme- diately this great work caught the public imagination. Since that day in 1743, Messiah has become one of our most The Great Music Hall in Fishamble Street, Dublin, familiar and popular musical where messiah was first performed landmarks. the chief diffi- culty with approaching this work today, of early as 1732, when he composed Esther, but course, is that very familiarity: like Hamlet or the arrival of Messiah as part of his london Lear, “the” Messiah has become so much a part series marked a decisive transition from Italian of our cultural landscape that it seems always operas to english oratorios, “in which the already known. But, again like Shakespeare, its Solemnity of Church-musick is agreeably greatness lies in the fact that it is also always united with the most pleasing Airs of the more interesting and remarkable than we have Stage,” to quote the librettist of Samson. Messiah remembered. is, however, very different from Handel’s other In July 1741, Handel’s librettist Charles Jen - oratorios, all of which which are essentially nens wrote to a friend: “Handel says he will do dramatic versions of Biblical stories presented nothing next Winter, but I hope I shall perswade without staging. the idea of setting the crux of him to set another Scripture Collection I have Christian belief, the story of Jesus’ birth, death, made for him, & perform it for his own Benefit and resurrection, was at the time a novel and in Passion Week. I hope he will lay out his whole potentially shocking one; to have this story Genius & Skill upon it, that the Composition told entirely in the form of Biblical quotations may excell all his former Compositions, as the from both the old and new testaments was Subject excells every other subject. the Subject remarkable indeed. is messiah.” In fact, within the month Handel except for the brief nativity scene in Part I, was hard at work. He began composing Messiah where the Angel speaks to the Shepherds, Mes - on August 22 and finished a rough score a little siah’s libretto is constructed wholly from pas- more than three weeks later. sages in the third person, thus avoiding the the composition of Messiah proved to be a chief objection against oratorio in general and turning-point in Handel’s career. He had begun this subject in particular: the messiah never ac- working with a new kind of english oratorio as tually sings. But this also opened the way for a PROGRAM NOTES far greater breadth of textual reference. Jennens on first glance, the grandeur of Jennens’ used a passage from St. Paul that neatly sums conception is not particularly reflected in up the program of his “Scripture Collection”— Han del’s instrumentation. Immediately upon “God was manifested in the Flesh, justify’d completing Messiah, Handel began composing by the Spirit, seen of Angels, preached among Samson for an especially large and colorful the Gentiles, believed on in the World, received orchestra. But Messiah’s original version was up in Glory.” scored only for strings and trumpets, perhaps because Handel was unsure of the forces he would find at its first performance in Dublin; the string parts were later reinforced with oboes and bassoons. using only these simple means, however, he makes remarkably telling effects. For example, we first hear the trumpets only “from a distance, and softly” in the chorus “Glory to God,” with- out their usual accompani- ment of drums. their full brilliance is revealed much further on, well into the Hal - le lujah Chorus, where they finally are heard onstage with the timpani. And despite the minimal forces he uses, Handel’s mu- sical language in Messiah is full of variety. Just as Handel’s own speech was an eloquent mix of at least four languages, so too his musical discourse Portrait of Charles Jennens (c. 1745), by Thomas Hudson (1701–1779) accommodates with ease the english anthem tradition, the All this is far more than a simple retelling Italian opera aria, the tumultuous crowd-scenes of the life of Christ, and Jennens’ net of quota- of German lutheran Passions, and even the tions draws our attention to the symbolic im- French opera overture (its first appearance in an plications of these events. this is why (for oratorio). Such stylistic wealth was somewhat example) the tremendously dramatic Passion lost on Jennens, who thought that the score was story in Part II is conveyed entirely at one re- not entirely up to his libretto and complained move, through the language of the old testa - vociferously about “some weak parts, which he ment whose prophecies it is seen to embody. was too idle & too obstinate to retouch, tho’ Indeed, Part III (which is patterned largely I used great importunity to perswade him to it.” after the Anglican burial service, with its em- Jennens’ pressure to alter parts of the work phasis on resurrection and the victory over sin) (particularly the overture, in which he thought has no “plot” at all, but rather concerns itself “there are some passages far unworthy of Handel, with the wider implications of God’s interven- but much more unworthy of the messiah”) tion in the world. seems to have materially contributed to a major PLAYBILL PROGRAM NOTES breakdown for Handel in April of 1743, “a return and its annual benefit performances were so of his Paralytick Disorder, which affects his Head successful that the hospital even considered re- & Speech.” the librettist admitted shortly there- questing Parliament to reserve Messiah “to the after “that a letter I wrote him about [Messiah] sole use & Benefit of this Hospital.” (When con- contributed to the bringing of his last illness sulted, Handel made it clear that this “did not upon him… this shews that I gall’d him: but seem agreeable for the Present.”) Charles Burney I have not done with him yet.” Interestingly, wrote eloquently of this work’s social (and eco- Handel scholar Frederic Feh - leisen has pointed to the structural importance of the overture in presenting several motivic ideas that are crucial to the musical and theological unfolding of the work; the whole is bound together in a tonal scheme so important that the threat of undoing its crucial threads seems to have made Handel physically ill. After its rapturous wel- come in Dublin, Messiah re- ceived a rather more mixed reception in london the fol- lowing season, where Jennens noted “a clamor rais’d against it, which has only occasion’d it’s being advertis’d without its name.” Perhaps because of this controversy, Handel seems to have been reluctant to revive Messiah the follow- ing season. It was performed again in 1745, but not re- The chapel of London’s Foundling Hospital, the venue peated until 1749, when it for regular charity performances of messiah from 1750 assumed what was to become its regular place at the end of his season, just nomic) force that it “fed the hungry, clothed the before easter. the next year it found an even naked, fostered the orphan, and enriched suc- more appropriate home as a regular benefit for a ceeding managers of oratorios, more than any local charity. the “Hospital for the maintenance single musical production in this or any country.” and education of exposed and Deserted Young It is pleasant to find that what its librettist de- Children,” otherwise known as the Foundling scribed happily as “a fine entertainment” had so Hospital, welcomed Handel to its board of salutary an effect on the world. In re-creating governors in 1750, and from thence till Handel’s the musical conditions of Handel’s own perform- death a performance in the hospital’s chapel of ances, we may hope that we re-create the reac- Messiah at eastertime became an annual event.