It’s a good thing that Peanut wasn’t GF Handel’s dog — he never would have put up for being ignored during that 3-week period when the master composed Messiah! You can see that Mr. Peanut is ready for the holidays in this photo, wearing his little hunter’s cap. The little guy is surprisingly good natured about having his photo taken! Here’s some interesting trivia about this beloved piece for your reading pleasure:
- Messiah is rich with vast effects derived from simple means, along with beautiful melodies and the insistent rhythms that are characteristic of the Baroque era, easy to love and hard to forget.
- The Music gains extraordinary intensity through the Baroque compositional technique of “word painting,” in which the flow of notes in the music actually seems to replicate a shape or contour that the words describe.
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Papa Haydn, always generously praising the merits of other composers, called Handel “der Meister von uns allen,” or “the master of us all” at a performance of Messiah. But Beethoven, who was far more grudging with his approval, used almost the same words—“der unerreichte Meister aller Meisters,” “the unequalled master of all masters.”
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The association between diva soprano and the soprano solo role in Messiah extends more than a century earlier, back to the legendary Jenny Lind, who barnstormed the U.S. as a Barnum-sponsored headliner in the 1840s. On one of her transatlantic crossings, the Swedish Nightingale asked the ship’s captain to wake her before dawn, without specifying a reason for her request. At the appointed hour, she stood with him at the ship’s railing as the sun rose over the waters and sang “I Know My Redeemer Liveth.” -
Handel’s Messiah continues to exert a very real influence upon modern composers. Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, composed in 1971, brings together music, dance and diverse religious and secular traditions in a way that owes much to Handel. Andrew Lloyd Webber—like Handel, a master of theatrical craft in music—wrote a requiem mass as his only full- scale classical work. Paul McCartney, too, ventured into oratorio with his only classical work, The Liverpool Oratorio.
This year will be the tenth annual performance of Messiah by the Long Beach Camerata Singers. The chorus will be accompanied by Musica Angelica Baroque OrchestraCamerata sings Handel’s Messiah. TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE $40. www.LBCamerata.org or call 562-373-5654. Sunday December 3, 4:30pm, Beverly O’Neill Theater