Handel’s Messiah as it is Played Throughout Time
Handel’s Messiah is a traditional piece played within the month of December, when everyone is preparing for the holidays. This occurs so often, it is often hard to not equate it with the holiday season now a days. However, Messiah is an oratorio, a sort of opera-sounding, non-opera piece meant to be played during the season of Lent, a Catholic season that takes place in the month and a half leading up to Easter. Because of this, Handel’s Messiah is traditionally supposed to be performed within the Spring time, not in the cold of the winter months leading up to Christmas.
As seen in the source to the left, only 40 years after the premiere of a traditional and well-known piece was still designated to be played during the season of Lent. This article was written in December of 1785, but it explained that Handel’s Messiah was one of 6 Handel pieces to be played during this season. In a sense, this scheduling makes sense, as an oratorio is an almost-opera piece that is performed during the season of Lent, when the performance of operas are frowned upon by the church.
In contrast, in this radio listing from The (London) Times to the left, Handel’s Messiah was to be played during the month of December, a month that is dedicated within the Roman Catholic Church to the preparation for the birth of Jesus Christ (or the Messiah). This logic behind performing this piece during this season also makes sense when context is given behind the piece. The Messiah is a piece celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, which would commonly be associated with Christmas, since within the Christian religions that is when Jesus is born. The fact that the piece is an oratorio, a piece meant to be performed during the season of Lent, fails to support this thinking.
The transition from the piece being performed during Lent to being performed during Christmas had happened throughout its history, as can be seen within the primary sources above. When and why this transition happened, I do not know. However, I speculate that when the Church stopped being so heavily prevalent within the day to day lives of the rest of society, many stopped focusing on the fact that Handel’s Messiah was an oratorio that was meant to be performed during a specific time within the Catholic Church calendar. Instead, it seems as though society instead decided to focus on the meaning behind the piece, which celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ, and someone decided it would make sense for its performance to take place within the holiday season leading up to Christmas. This ideology seemed to catch on as The Messiah does not seem to be played in any other season aside from winter.
Overall, I think Handel’s Messiah is particularly interesting considering the way the secular society seemed to influence its performance, especially after the seemingly mixed feeling acceptance of the piece when it was first premiered.