14 September: Handel's Messiah

On this date in 1741 George Frederick Handel completed The Messiah (best known for The Hallelujah Chorus). Here are ten things you may not know about this piece of Music:

1. The whole thing took Handel 24 days to write.
2. It wasn't unusual for Handel to complete works in that kind of timescale, although the original score did show he was writing quickly - there were blots, errors and crossings out, but not as many as musicologists might expect in a work of this length. At the end of his manuscript Handel wrote the letters "SDG"—Soli Deo Gloria, "To God alone the glory". The original manuscript for Messiah is now held in the British Library's music collection.
3. The lyrics are from the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, compiled by Charles Jennens, who wrote an accompanying pamphlet explaining why he'd chosen the particular passages he'd used.
4. The Messiah is divided into three parts. The Hallelujah Chorus is at the end of Part II.
5. Handel's first love, and source of his reputation, was Italian opera, but that wasn't so fashionable at the time. He'd switched to writing English oratorio because that was what the public wanted. The Messiah was his sixth work in this genre.
6. As was his habit, Handel recycled tunes from his earlier works to include in his Messiah. "O Death, where is thy sting?"; "His yoke is easy", "And he shall purify", "Unto us a child is born" and "All we like sheep" are all re-worked tunes from opera's he'd written as much as 20 years earlier.
7. The première performance took place in Dublin on 13 April 1742. Handel had been invited to perform a charity concert there, in aid of prisoners' debt relief, the Mercer's Hospital, and the Charitable Infirmary. The concert raised around £400, providing about £127 to each of the three nominated charities and securing the release of 142 indebted prisoners. In order to maximise the numbers of people who could attend the concert, gentlemen were requested to remove their swords, and ladies were asked not to wear hoops in their dresses. Charles Jennens was unhappy that the première was in Ireland and not England. He said, "... it was some mortification to me to hear that instead of performing Messiah here he has gone into Ireland with it."
8. The London première was at Covent Garden on 23 March 1743. The Messiah was very well received in Dublin, but not so much in London. The media at the time poured cold Water on it by expressing the opinion that a sacred work about Christ shouldn't be performed in a theatre using secular singers. In response, Handel reduced the planned number of performances from six to three, annoying Jennens once again.
9. The first recording of The Messiah was conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham and issued on 78rpm records. Since then it has been recorded many times including one conducted by Sir Henry Wood in 1926 with the 3,500-strong choir and orchestra of the Crystal Palace Handel Festival, and a the Royal Choral Society conducted by Malcolm Sargent, recorded at the Royal Albert Hall.
10. It is customary for audiences to stand during the Hallelujah chorus. It's not known exactly why this came about. One theory is that King George II was at the London Première, and he stood up for it, obliging everyone else to stand also. However, there is no evidence that the king attended this or any other performance of the work.