A season with no ‘Messiah’
The soaring melodies and communal experience cannot be replaced, but a message of hope and faith endures this year
The melodies and communal experience cannot be replaced, but a message of hope and faith endures.
Imagine a Christmas season without Santa. Or Christmas trees. Or mistletoe. The vicious coronavirus pandemic can’t stop any of these. But, unfortunately, it’s robbing us of something similarly essential to the holiday season: live performances of George FridericHandel’s “Messiah.”
Normally at this time of year, “Messiahs” would be blossoming in churches and concert halls across the Chicago area and the rest of the United States. Virtuoso singerswould be delivering its sublime arias. Magnificent choirswould be thundering the “Hallelujah” Chorus.
Early music groupswould be attempting to re-create theway the piece sounded in the mid-18th century, whenHandel premiered his masterpiece in Dublin. And everyday music loverswould be gathering by the thousands to sing along with do-it-yourself “Messiahs,” attesting to thework’s global appeal and treasured message of comfort and joy.
Most of these performances have been canceled, with a few migrating online for truncated, prerecorded, scaled-down versions ofHandel’s most famous oratorio.
Which raises two uncomfortable and inseparable questions: What are we missing? And howdowe get by without “Messiah”?
“We’re missing the sense of community for the performers as much as the audience,” says tenorMatthew Dean, director ofUniversity of Chicago chapels and a soloist in RockefellerMemorial Chapel’s annual “Messiah” (and others).
TheUniversity of Chicago’s “Messiah” has been presented annually since 1930— until now.
“We’re missing the physical experience of feeling the sound in your body as an audience member,” adds Dean. “There is nothing like the acoustics of Rockefeller Chapel … the echoes bouncing off the space and kind of going through you.
“It sympathetically vibrates you in a way that reminds you of the season and of your connection with fellow listeners.”
Indeed, “Messiah” stands as more than just an epicwork illuminating
“the scriptural account of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth,” as the InternationalMusic Foundation describes it (IMF has drawn throngs to its annual “Do-ItYourself ‘Messiah’ ” in downtown Chicago since 1976).
Thework has long since become a communal experience— an occasion for everyone to come together and revel not just in the spirit of the Christmas season but in our common humanity.
“It’s really emotionally just very difficult to not be with our fellow musicians and to not be sharing this with a live audience,” says Andrew Lewis, artistic director of Chicago’s BellaVoce ensemble, which has performed a complete, period-instruments “Messiah” annually since 2010 (except in 2018).
“Music is an act of communication, not just between musicians, but between musicians and the audience. And when there isn’t an audience, it’s just not the same thing.
“Every year I revisit the decision: Shouldwe continue to do this? And thenwe get into doing it, andwe have so much fun with it, and it’s such an amazing piece of music that itwould be a hole, personally, inmy life, if I didn’t do it. And I think that’s howa lot of people in the audience feel.”
So therewill be a hole in our musical lives this season, aswe yearn to experience again a magnum opus Handel composed in a fewweeks in 1741 and premiered during the Easter season the next year. “Messiah” was an instant hit, its Easter-season performance tradition eventuallymoving to Christmas in theU.S.
It’s never easy to explain exactly why any particular piece of music becomes universally revered, but in the case of “Messiah” at least one reason seems apparent: Handel’s soaring melodies, stirring solos and redemptive choruses convey the same message of hope and faith as its text. You don’t have to be Christian, religious or classically trained to be profoundlymoved by the score’s aspirational qualities, galvanic climaxes and impeccable craft.
All you have to do is sit and listen— or join in.
“As music directors like to say, it’s never needed a revival,” says Rockefeller Chapel tenor Dean.
“It’s been like ‘Cats’ or ‘Phantom of the Opera.’ … The melodies have become familiar in our society because they’re often recorded. If folks know one majorwork of ‘early’— so to speak — music, it very often is thiswonderful Handel oratorio.
“Also, I think there’s a measure of self-reflection in the text, when audiences come in and engage with this