Glimpses #147: Messiah and George Frideric Handel
Product Code: GLM147
Format: 4-page bulletin insert
Our Price: $2.00 per pack (each pack contains 25 copies). Back issues are available only in packs of 25 copies.
Product Description: On April 8 of that year, he gave what he considered his farewell concert. Miserably discouraged, he felt forced to retire from public activities at the age of 56. Then two unforeseen events converged to change his life. A wealthy friend, Charles Jennings, gave Handel a libretto based on the life of Christ, taken entirely from the Bible. He also received a commission from a Dublin charity to compose a work for a benefit performance.
Handel set to work composing on August 22 in his little house on Brook Street in London. He grew so absorbed in the work that he rarely left his room, hardly stopping to eat. Within six days Part One was complete. In nine days more he had finished Part Two, and in another six, Part Three. The orchestration was completed in another two days. In all, 260 pages of manuscript were filled in the remarkably short time of 24 days.
Sir Newman Flower, one of Handel's many biographers, summed up the consensus of history: "Considering the immensity of the work and the short time involved, it will remain, perhaps forever, the greatest feat in the whole history of music composition." Handel's title for the commissioned work was, simply, Messiah.
