Messiah Musings Part Six:

By Josiah Tazelaar

 During the weeks preceding Christmas, it seems as if "everyone and his uncle" are performing Handel's "Messiah", and yet, it was meant to be performed during Lent or at Easter, due to Parts 2 and 3, which recount the suffering, death, and Resurrection of Christ.  A Lenten performance in the US is rare, indeed.

    There was a movement at the time of the writing of "Messiah" called Deism.  It was the belief in a god, but a god who had created the cosmos and let it run its course.  To Deists, there was no divine intervention.  Deists argued that Jesus was neither the Son of God or the Messiah.  (Voltaire and Rousseau were Deists, and the most famous American Deists were Jefferson and Franklin.) 

    Now, Charles Jennens, librettist for Handel's "Messiah", considered Deism a serious menace.  Furthermore, deists seemed to be doing the work to prove a point that Jews claimed, that Messiah had not come.  By using his method of lyrics for Handel's music, namely prophecy and fulfillment, Jennens sought to use the oratorio as a sort of "in your face" rebuttal to the Deists.  And to the Jews. 

    The writer Michael Marissen, in the New York Times (April 8, 2007) suggests that Jennens and Handel changed the word "heathens" to "nations" in "Why Do the Nations so Furiously Rage Together?"  (Both the King James Version and the Book of Common Prayer use the word "heathen")  In order to include the Jews who "imagine a vain thing" (Jews were not considered heathens by Christians in Handel's time, but, as a "nation", they could be castigated.).  In the tenor aria "All They That See Him"....wagging their heads, refers to the Jews on a pilgrimage, rejecting Jesus.  Another tenor aria "Thou Shalt Break Them" (with a rod of iron, and dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel), which follows the recitative "He that dwelleth in Heaven shall laugh them to scorn; the Lord shall have them in derision", supposedly refers to the Jews (by cleverly omitting verses 5-8 in Psalm 2, which refers to the Gentiles (or heathens), and proceding on to Verse 9.  And what is this breaking "them" into pieces?  Why, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in AD 70 by the Romans!  That was the punishment for having rejected and killed Jesus.  "Hallelujah!!!"  That's the chorus which follows those provocative sections (#40-43).  In this chorus, Handel, for the first time in this oratorio, uses trumpets and percussion together, indicating triumph.  (Jesus and Christians have won.  The Jews have lost.)  In your face! 

    Is that why George II stood up, and everyone with him?

    It's like standing up for a national anthem.  A feeling of solidarity, love of country, love of what it stands for, occasionally for defiance, occasionally for comfort in defeat, occasionally for in-your-face-we-are-the-best-and-we've-proved-it.  Is that why we stand for "Hallelujah"?

    Well, as I said, this theory was written by a scholar who thinks he has found a hidden, and sinister, secret meaning.  While Handelians point out that Handel, who wrote so many oratorios featuring Jewish heroes, and that Jews flocked to this works, could not have been anti-Semitic, Marissen retorts that, while Handel did have high opinions of the Old Testament heroes, he saw them not as Jews but as "proto-Christians", believers in God's expected Messiah, Jesus.  And he states there is no proof that many Jews went to his oratorios because most were too poor to attend such concerts.  To that, I say, most Christians were too poor, as well.  And, as for George standing, and for millions thereafter, to this day, I'd like to think that it IS a good time for a stretch, and we do think the music itself is worthy of a standing respect, and I, for one, and, I venture to say, almost everyone else, never gave a thought to beating anyone over the head with a musical masterpiece.

 continue to Part Seven

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Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

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