The Current Issue

November 2024, Issue 535 Freya Johnston on Handel’s Messiah * Nicholas McDowell on John Milton * Fiona Sampson on Syliva Plath * D J Taylor on Tom Sharpe * Richard Vinen on Boris Johnson * Pratinav Anil on the ruling class * Bijan Omrani on women in the ancient world * Nicholas Rankin on Oxford at war * Howard Davies on Germany’s economic miracle * Alex de Waal on Ethiopia * David Abulafia on El Cid * Altair Brandon-Salmon on Mies van der Rohe * Ian Fraser on Credit Suisse * Frances Cairncross on the care crisis * Zoe Guttenplan on Ali Smith * Stevie Davies on Andrew Miller * D D Guttenplan on Nick Harkaway * Jeremy Wikeley on Jonathan Coe * Sam Reynolds on Samantha Harvey * Eleanor Baker on book curses *  and much, much more…

Freya Johnston

The Making of Handel's Messiah

Does anything ever truly happen in the Messiah? This extraordinarily popular tripartite choral work, first performed in Dublin in 1742, consists almost entirely of saying rather than of doing. Circling around the redemptive power of Christ, it combines declarations with questions, prophecies, injunctions and exhortations (‘Who is this King of Glory?’, ‘Behold, I tell you a Mystery’, ‘Daughter of Sion, shout’, ‘He shall speak’). Full of urgency, tribulation and momentum, the Messiah nevertheless lacks a plot – unless we class the perennial human emotions of hope and fear, and the movement between the two, as dramatic action. The oratorio is sometimes described as a commentary, but it is a compilation of sources... read more

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