On Thursday evening we attended a full-length performance of Handel's oratorio Messiah by the English Concert directed by Harry Bicket at the Turner Sims concert hall, here in Southampton. That's over two hours of music and chorale, divided by a twenty minute interval, which is a lot of magnificence to absorb in one sitting. Like, say, a well-edited performance of Hamlet, I can now see why cut-down versions of Messiah are popular, ones that stick to the "good bits" that everybody knows, glued together with acceptable lengths of chorale and orchestral magic.
I'm neither a musician nor a true baroque aficionado, and had never experienced Messiah before in full or live, so I was a fairly naïve member of the audience, unaware of where in the sequence those more famous solo spots and choruses would come. So to get the full-on brain-rattling blast of "For unto us a child is born" (WONDERFUL!! COUNSELLOR!!) so early on in Part 1 was a hair-raising thrill, swiftly followed by one of the loveliest instrumental passages, the lilting "shepherd bagpipers" Pastorale that leads up to what is always my favourite bit of the Nativity story, those "certain poor shepherds" minding their own business (washing their socks by night, as we used to sing at school), only to be megablasted by an urgent angelic newsflash. WTF? Oi, you with the wings! Don't scare the sheep like that!
Now, I am unashamedly English, and one of our distinctive national characteristics is to insulate ourselves from the dangers of sublimity by our instinct for parody and piss-take; we just can't help it. If there is the slightest scope for a subversive giggle, we'll find it. Does "watch their flocks" sound like "wash their socks"? You bet! Does "Comfort ye" invite "cup of tea"? Need I ask? So my personal takeaway prophylactic smirk from what was an overwhelmingly sublime experience turned up in the chorus based on these words from Isaiah 53:6: All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way. In that splendidly dismembering approach to the ornamentation of source texts typical of the baroque oratorio, the words "all we like sheep" have been separated off and get repeated multiple times to a jolly little tune, practically a jingle, which comes across as a cheerful endorsement: "We like sheep!" Check it out. Well, sheep are OK, but... Heh.
I have to say, that characteristic bah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-roque musical tic, trope (or whatever technical term describes getting a gallon of music out of a teaspoon of text) can get – to my ears, anyway – quite annoying ultimately, unless you just let it flow over you, like a musical cascade of paralinguistic sounds. But if you do sneak a look at the actual libretto you cannot help but be struck by the fact that a mere dozen or so words from the Bible have been pumped up by melismatic inflation and ostinatoid ornamentation (I'm floundering here, terminologically, do step in) so as to take up ten whole minutes of your evening. Now, I'm sure attention spans have shortened since 1741, but even those well-upholstered Georgian butts must have been shuffling by the time that the very final part of the final chorus – a generous two hours after the first notes of the overture – manages to squeeze the best part of four minutes out of the single word "amen". Wonderful, Herr Handel, simply wonderful, but some of us have a sedan chair to catch.
A curious thing happened at the end of Part 2. As soon as the opening notes of the Hallelujah chorus sounded, a handful of the audience stood up. I thought perhaps something unusual had happened on stage – I was reminded of the time a member of the audience collapsed during a concert in Winchester Cathedral (see An Incident in Winchester) – but no: about half a dozen people out of a capacity audience of 300 were standing, and stayed standing motionless throughout the chorus, like Antony Gormley body casts. It was a bit uncanny: was it some sort of protest? Or an outbreak of anti-baroque impatience, perhaps – "For pity's sake just spit it out!" But eventually I suspected it might be the remnant of a Thing, like standing in the cinema when the National Dirge used to be played at the end of a film (bonkers, I know, but it always was, even in our local fleapit). A quick google when we got home confirmed my suspicion. The (probably apocryphal) origin story claims that King George II was present at a performance, and was so taken with this passage that he stood up, with the result that everyone else had to stand up, too. But if that's not actually true, then I have absolutely no idea what the hallelujah is going on with that. Maybe someone out there knows?
Anyway, it was all superbly done. There is nothing quite like live orchestral music, and a choir of just ten male voices and eight female voices supplemented (unusually?) by two male altos is overwhelming when it really lets loose: WONDERFUL!! COUNSELLOR!! Phew... Two of the four soloists were truly outstanding, I won't say which, although I will say that if you get a chance to hear Chiara Skerath sing you won't be wasting your time.
But the essential English-style comic deflation of the burgeoning sublimity was provided by the two baroque trumpet players. They sidled in when needed, but most of the time were either absent, or sat off to one side, constantly shaking and blowing spit out of their instruments, shifting in their chairs, and moving their music stand around; a tall thin one and a short stout one, just like Morecambe and Wise. Except that, when called upon, they mostly seemed to play all the right notes in the right order.
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