Getting at Handel on things

“Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it, I know not. God knows.” — German-British composer George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) on composing the “Hallelujah Chorus” portion of his 1742 oratorio “Messiah”

They say some music is timeless. Other music not so much.
To say the least, 282 years is plenty of time for music to go out of style, no matter the genre. It’s hard to imagine radio stations, satellite streaming services and tribute cover bands singing The Beatles’ 1968 “Yellow Submarine” in 2250, the Bee Gees’1978 disco hit “Stayin’ Alive” in 2260, Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 folk ballad “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” in 2258, or Elmo Shropshire and Patsy Trigg’s 1979 vehicular homicide Christmas ballad “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” in 2261.
But on the other hand, Baroque composer George Frideric Handel’s 1742 oratorio “Messiah” is still a smash hit, drawing near capacity crowds for Saturday and Sunday concerts last weekend at a historically ethnic Swedish Lutheran church where I now live. Back in the day, immigrant Swedes with last names like Anderson, Gustafson, Johnson and Olson rode the Chicago & Northwestern Railway to the one-time end of the line at 7th Street, where they disembarked with their steamer trunks and set about building homes, churches and businesses around the depot.
And so it was that this historically ethnic Swede was hearing Handel’s famed “Messiah” live for the first time, a nearly three-hour concert encompassing 38 of Handel’s 53 “Messiah” sections across three parts drawn from the Old and New Testaments of The Bible — The Prophesied and Promised Redeemer; The Suffering, Dying and Living Redeemer; and The Triumphant and Glorified Redeemer.

As an oratorio — a dramatic work in an operatic style on biblical subjects, minus the sets and costumes — “Messiah” was the ninth of Handel’s 25 oratorios, and the most famous.
The Thanksgiving Weekend local performance of “Messiah” is a 78-year community tradition here, a peacetime gift to the community launched in 1945 following the end of World War II, this year’s “Messiah” production encompassing more than 40 area churches and organizations within a 50-mile radius, with musicians including a regional chorus of 80 soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor and bass singers, four professional soloists, a 14-member chamber orchestra of violin, viola, cello, bass, bassoon, oboe and timpani, and four accompanists on pipe organ, harpsichord and trumpet.
Like many, I’ve heard selected snippets of “Messiah” around the holidays, in my case two of the 53 sections that comprise the famed oratorio by Handel, well-known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi and organ concertos, including his orchestral 1717 “Water Music.”
Even as a youngster listening to the holiday compilation “A Very Merry Christmas” vinyl record albums brought home every Christmas by my parents from the W.T. Grant Co. department store near our home in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I thrilled at the soaring musical scores and voices lifted in near-angelic song performing the nativity-themed “For Unto Us a Child is Born” and the resurrection-themed “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s “Messiah.”
It was an entirely new thrill for me to hear a majority of the work — a condensed 38 of the 53 sections —performed live in concert in a historic century-old church filled with 1,200 members of the community — a crowd bigger than its April 13, 1842 debut in Dublin, Ireland. I kid you not, I teared up at the first note of the opening Part 1 orchestral overture, the first of many such tissue-dabbing moments over the next three hours of glorious chorus and orchestra, interspersed with soprano, mezzo, tenor and bass solos. As my daughter would say, I was a hot mess — and loving every glorious minute of it.
Handel, who received his training in Halle, Germany and worked as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712 and becoming a naturalized British subject by Act of Parliament in 1727, composed the 260-page “Messiah” score at an inspired pace of creative ecstasy across the span of 24 days in his Brook Street flat in London in 1742.
Thus wrote Handel after completing the work’s most famous section, the rousing signature “Hallelujah” chorus, “Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I know not. God knows.’’
It’s said that Handel’s assistant found the composer in tears, saying, “I think I did see heaven open, and the very face of God.”
Handel’s “Messiah” has that transcendent quality which spans the centuries and generations, so much so that audiences even today, including myself and 1,199 others last Sunday, continue to be inexorably drawn to stand at the sheer majesty of the “Hallelujah” chorus, much like King George II — and his British subjects — did at the oratorio’s 1843 London debut.
Recalled James Beattie of the famed moment: “They were so transported that they all, together with the king, started up and remained standing.”
And I predict they will for at least another 282 years in the future.
Elmo & Patsy’s “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer?”
Not so much.
Eric Johnson can be reached at eric@fyinorthwoods.com.