Nothing in classical music catches the spirit of Christmas quite as well as Handel’s Messiah. Which is ironic, as the piece isn’t about Christmas at all. It was actually composed for Easter, and the whole narrative of the piece prepares us for the central mystery of the Christian faith: the resurrection of Christ. So if we want properly “authentic” performances of the piece, we really should wait for Easter.
But who cares about “authenticity”? Quite a few people, in fact. But it’s not the “wrong” performance date that irks the authenticists. What really gets them riled up is the way Handel’s great work has often been performed, which according to them is all wrong. The piece as originally performed in Handel’s lifetime had quite small forces – though it’s hard to say exactly how small, as the surviving manuscripts differ among themselves.
It’s safe to say that a band of around 20, and a chorus of approximately the same number get us close to a sound Handel would have recognised. That sound was remarkably short-lived, as a fashion for huge performances soon took hold. It began as early as 1784, only a few decades after Handel’s death, when a huge gathering of 525 singers and instrumentalists performed the piece in Westminster Abbey.
By then, Mozart had re-scored the piece adding flutes, clarinets (an instrument Handel would never have heard), horns and trombones. In the 19th century, performances became ever more grand, driven by the increasing size of venues. The Neapolitan immigrant Michael Costa conducted performances of Messiah with thousands in the choir, nearly 500 in the orchestra, and a pair of cymbals to give extra oomph to those big climaxes. Performances in America were often as big or bigger, and even the more sedate tastes of the Germans didn’t rule out performances with 200 or more. In the 20th century, there were murmurs that perhaps the gigantism had got out of hand, but the public didn’t care, partly because the tradition of performances by big regional choral societies such as the famous one at Huddersfield was so well established.
It’s not surprising a reaction to all this set in during the 1920s, when a lean neo-classicism was all the rage. I’ve recently come across some evidence for the new trend in this very newspaper, thanks to eagle-eyed press officers at the Royal Albert Hall. They discovered a Telegraph review of a performance of Messiah which took place in 1923. It was given by the Royal Choral Society and was on a huge scale. “The big choir was on great form, knowing every semiquaver of the familiar choruses, singing lustily when not listening or applauding,” says our man, which to me sounds like damning with faint praise.
