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Messiah (HWV 56) [1] [n 1] is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel. The text was compiled from the King James Bible and the Coverdale Psalter [ n 2 ] by Charles Jennens .
Messiah is not typical Handel oratorio; there are no named characters, as are usually found in Handel’s setting of the Old Testament stories, possibly to avoid charges of blasphemy. It is a meditation rather than a drama of personalities, lyrical in method; the narration of the story is carried on by implication, and there is no dialogue.
George Frideric (or Frederick) Handel (/ ˈ h æ n d əl / HAN-dəl; [a] baptised Georg Fried[e]rich Händel, [b] German: [ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈhɛndl̩] ⓘ; 23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) [3] [c] was a German-British Baroque composer well-known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concertos.
The following works are no longer thought to have been composed by Handel: The Passion nach dem Evang. Johannes (the Passion according to the evangelist John ). The work was published in volume nine of the Händel-Gesellschaft (1860), but is now thought to have been composed by the German composer Georg Böhm .
In Handel’s great chorus, the word is joyous, victorious, accompanied by trumpets and drums. In Sergei Rachmaninoff’s "All Night Vigil," however, hallelujah reflects a more quiet devotion.
Messiah is not a typical Handel oratorio; there are no named characters, as are usually found in Handel’s setting of the Old Testament stories, possibly to avoid charges of blasphemy. It is a meditation rather than a drama of personalities, lyrical in method; the narration of the story is carried on by implication, and there is no dialogue.
George Frideric Handel's operas comprise 42 musical dramas that were written between 1705 and 1741 in various genres.Though his large scale English language works written for the theatre are technically oratorios and not operas, several of them, such as Semele (1744), have become an important part of the opera repertoire.
Mozart first heard Handel's Messiah in London in 1764 or 1765, and then in Mannheim in 1777. The first performance, in English, in Germany was in 1772 in Hamburg. [1] Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was the first to perform the oratorio in German: he presented it in 1775 in Hamburg, with a libretto translated by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Christoph Daniel Ebeling, followed by repeat ...