Hi everyone! This is Connie Sokol, and you're listening to Balance Redefined Radio. I've spent over 20 years teaching people how to redefine what balance really is, meaning a more purposeful and joyful life.
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[00:00] Welcome back to Balance Redefined and I am Connie Sokol and I am here to share with you some wonderful insights on Handel's Messiah.
[00:09] This is from George Handel and we know him as a very famous composer and I'm going to jump right in because I don't want to talk about all the historical part of this. I really want to talk about him being at this place, this crossroads because it's so fabulous to liken these famous people who we revere for some of the things that they have done.
[00:30] For example, with George Handel creating the Messiah and that every Christmas season, this and Easter, it's played and it is profound and even though we can enjoy it year round, it is just a profound experience if you've ever listened to it.
[00:46] If you've ever attended a messiah singing, there is something that happens when you listen to this music and especially when you partake of or participate in singing that music.
[00:57] For example, with that messiah singing, it's incredible. You all are in an auditorium and everyone is split into their parts of Soprano, alto, tenor, bass, and then you get the Libretto and you just sing.
[01:11] It doesn't matter if you know what you're doing or you don't know, you just all sing out and it's easier to kind of follow along because everybody's singing so beautifully. So here is this incredible experience and we we get to have it year after year, season after season.
[01:29] How did this happen and what was the background that was going on in order for this to be created? And that's the story that's interesting to me.
[01:39] So let me take you very quickly back where George Handel, he was well known as a composer, but he was also a businessman and he really put his time and energy into the producing and writing of his work and he would spend his time and energy doing the business deals as well as the composing and to kind of mixed results.
[02:00] So he enjoyed some great success. He did a lot of compositions that were religiously inspired: Esther Saw Deborah, all of these different oratorios, and things like that...
[02:11] But what happened is what I want to focus on.
[02:15] He was going through rough patches and he was doing his operas and they were, some were good and some were Max with, you know, met with mixed results and then it got to where whereby the 17 forties, it was getting really rough.
[02:28] He was performing them in Haymarket, in London, but it was to like small houses and kind of listless audiences.
[02:35] And that did not bode well. So then he moved to Lincoln's inn fields theater. But then that ended up, he ended up closing there because it was financially hemorrhaging the place because it was not having success.
[02:48] He actually wrote about 40 operas and the last one especially, I mean he had several, many that that ended up not doing well.
[02:55] The last one that he ended on failed miserably. It closed early. Like it only had a few runs I believe. So here's this man who has written something that is, I would consider one of the all time most incredible, most famous, most profound pieces on Jesus Christ. And yet he was at this failing point.
[03:18] And so what happened, and I'm putting this in very short paraphrasing things, he was at this kind of destitute place. He had closed his season at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theater. It was truly, it was disastrous...
[03:33] Then he had talked about returning to Germany. That's where he was from. He was 55 years old.
[03:39] He had lost the royal patronage because King George the second did not come and attend his musical productions because Handel from what I understand, he had kind of lifted a piece that had been used in the funeral for Queen Caroline and actually put it in another opera will this so offended the king that he just stayed away.
[04:01] So now he lost the royal patronage and his principal libel, which was the Italian opera. And then he would have this ache in his arm. He had tendinitis and that returned and he was saying, you know, maybe I'm played out, maybe I should just quit music altogether.
[04:16] So he's in this really dark, dark time. And that for an artist, for a business person, for anybody who's involved in anything that matters to them with passion or desire or drive as a parent, you, we get to those places of just I is there any more left in here, I don't know that there is.
[04:37] And so we leave him at this really difficult place. So then we come back to him a little while later. He finds the Libretto from Charles Jenkins and they have collaborated a little bit.
[04:52] Things like that, but Jenine's it is understood that he did not even know that handle had put music to his libretto until after it was done and it was being played.
[05:02] So there wasn't any collaboration on that in that sense. So handle gets a libretto and loves it and does very little alterations.
[05:11] My understanding, very little alteration, but goes to town on writing this musical accompaniment to it and it only takes him 24 days to write this.
[05:22] He basically does part one and part two in another week and part three and a third week, 24 days for this incredible composition.
[05:31] And so he gets that done and he has been attributed with saying a couple of things and these have been made as far as research and those kinds of making sure they're validated, they've been validated that he really did say these things, but first and foremost, he said about the experience I did think I did see all heaven before me and the Great God himself.
[05:57] Now that's what he's been attributed to saying as his experience.
[06:01] While he was writing this messiah composition and he was not the type to consider himself or ever claim to be a visionary man, but it's sacred source material and the intense concentration during that composition, who knows what he might have experienced.
[06:20] The other thing that he says that is also possibly plausible is whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it. I know not God knows, so he knows that he had whatever experience it was.
[06:34] There was a spiritual experience attending this that was significant and was different than anything that he had experienced before in his other works.
[06:44] So you can imagine when this is done and he is preparing to perform this at covent garden this is significant, he has to be successful with this and this is what he spent his time, his energy on.
[06:58] He is so nervous about this that he actually does not put the title out on the playbills on the things that are being advertised.
[07:06] He puts a new sacred oratorio so that nobody even knows what it is and nobody even understands. In fact, some people ominously had taken them down and rip them down. So he is really at a crossroads.
[07:18] He has to be successful. His Italian opera days, they are gone. They are done.
[07:23] There's no going back and he needs to have some kind of new success. And of course if there is success with this, then people would be ready to follow him again. They would be ready to embrace him again as this composer that they could love and and have maybe even be consistently as one of those highly considered and favored composers if the king shows his interest in favor as well.
[07:50] So we get to that night and the music is playing and it is so different than what they had been used to and the actual reception of it was profound.
[08:03] The king actually attends and in fact this is one of my most favorite moments of knowing about Handel's Messiah. It says, in fact, I'm going to read this from James Beatty, who was there and wrote of the moment.
[08:15] He said, "When Handel's Messiah was first performed, the audience was exceedingly struck and affected by the music in general."
[08:24] And then he adds, "and I ask you, have you ever wondered why we always stand at a certain place in the Messiah, wherever you are," we stand right? And so I love that.
[08:35] This answers this question.
[08:36] James Beatty continues, "When the chord struck up for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, the audience was so transported that they all together with the king stood up and remained standing until the course ended and hence it became the fashion in England for the audience to stand. While that part of the music is performing."
[08:58] Isn't that incredible? And the king stood. Everyone was so moved by this incredible work in this incredible music set to actual scripture.
[09:10] They were so moved that they stood and you can imagine in effect standing to acknowledge that they are talking about the king of kings, the Lord of Lords, and this entire audience is on their feet showing the respect and showing the profound worship of a being higher than they are.
[09:31] It's so profound to me that we have this person who had, you know, in essence been prepared to write this...
[09:40] It seems to me with all the other religious librettos and Oratorios and things like that he had been involved in, that he had done all of these other Sol and Debra and and all of these other ones that he had actually been preparing to write this most majestic piece that is now timeless.
[10:00] That is something so profound that we get to experience. So I hope that you have gotten something interesting out of this. It actually was successful.
[10:08] He was able to continue doing that at Christmas time and Easter. Then the garden became his permanent home and he usually performed the messiah usually before, shortly before Easter, and he would actually go ahead and perform that.
[10:23] The last performance was given in April 6, 1759, and he died eight days later, so profound April 6, 1759.
[10:33] So hopefully you found something interesting that when you listen to Handel's, Messiah and all that, maybe you'll keep those things in mind that remember that there was a point in which the sweet composer who was writing this was really at his lowest, his wit's end, and this actually saved him figuratively and financially from this ruin and this artistic despair and his his life's work of where he was saying, "What's my purpose?"
[11:01] And he was actually able to find that purpose in this redemptive piece, which is so symbolic of the redemption that we experienced.
[11:10] So I know this is a little bit more on that I'm-religious-influence side, but I hope that you've received or learned something of value and that you will never listen to Handel's Messiah the same way again.
[11:22] Enjoy and stay tuned for more balance, redefined.
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