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Post by mikef6 on Apr 16, 2020 5:00:41 GMT
Two days ago, on April 13 Messiah (never, please, “The” Messiah) received its premiere performance 278 years ago in 1742, at The Great Music Hall in Fishamble Street, Dublin, Ireland. The performing forces at the premiere were quite modest. Handel composed the work to be premiered in Dublin. Not being intimately familiar with the abilities of the local musicians, he kept the orchestration simple: strings (an unknown number of which played at the premiere), two trumpets, kettle drums (timpani), an organ and a harpsichord (played alternately by Handel himself). The members of the chorus were drawn from the choirs of two local cathedrals: Christ Church and St. Patrick’s (where Jonathan Swift was, at the time, the Dean). Handel’s chorus consisted of 16 men, 16 boys, and two women soloists, the celebrated English contralto Susannah Cibber and Christina Maria Avoglio, an Italian soprano drawn from Handel’s opera company. Messiah received its London premiere on March 23, 1743, at the Covent Garden theater, and thus the tweaking began…
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Post by Eva Yojimbo on Apr 16, 2020 6:30:40 GMT
Thanks for the history. For years I listened to Messiah every year around Christmas. It's just a perfectly composed and constructed piece of work, and after multiple listens you really appreciate how Handel's the variety and types of styles and orchestration; like how the stripped down, simple, but profoundly moving He Was Despised contrasts with the rich, complex, polyphony of the Hallelujah! Chorus. Handel had such a knack for these kind of dramatic contrasts in his works. Though Messiah gets all the attention, Handel wrote at least a dozen other oratorios that would qualify as masterpieces, and he's also now arguably considered the greatest opera composer of the baroque era. Few composers had his gift for melody and drama, and that's arguably why he was worshiped by both Mozart and Beethoven, who looked to him more as a model even than they did to Bach.
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