For Relief of the Prisoners in several Gaols, and for the Support of Mercer’s Hospital in Stephen’s-street, and of the Charitable Infirmary on the Inns Quay, on Monday the 12th of April, will be performed at the Musick Hall on Fishamble-street, Mr. Handel’s new Grand Oratorio call’d the MESSIAH, in which the Gentlemen of the Choirs of both Cathedrals will assist, with some Concertos on the Organ, by Mr. Handel.”

Thus ran the advertisement (The Dublin Journal, 23-27 March 1742) for the first performances of what came to be the most beloved piece of music in England and, eventually, Canada. Rehearsals, each of them reviewed in the papers, attracted overflow crowds, and the opening performance was even pushed back a day to allow an extra public rehearsal. In order to seat as many listeners as possible, the event organizers requested that the ladies dispense with their hooped skirts and the gentlemen were enjoined to leave their swords at home.

From the first, audiences and critics were charmed:

“On Tuesday last (13 April) Mr. Handel’s Sacred Grand Oratorio, The Messiah, was performed at the New Musick-Hall in Fishamble Street, the best Judges allowed it to be the most finished piece of Musick. Words are wanting to express the exquisite Delight it afforded to the admiring, crowded Audience. The Sublime, the Grand, and the Tender, adapted to the most elevated, majestick and moving Words, conspired to transport and charm the ravished Heart and Ear.”

In the intervening 273 years, little has changed: Messiah continues to work its charms on thousands of music lovers, in Canada and in many countries around the world.

Although Handel’s Dublin performing forces were exceedingly modest in size, it wasn’t long until enormous choirs and orchestras took on this remarkable work. Of its evolution into a lumbering warhorse, the most perspicacious critic was surely George Bernard Shaw. In a 1913 magazine article he argued his case:

“Handel is not a mere composer in England: he is an institution. What is more, he is a sacred institution. When his Messiah is performed, the audience stands up, as if in church, while the Hallelujah chorus is being sung…Every three years there is a Handel Festival, at which his oratorios are performed by four thousand executants from all the choirs in England. The effect is horrible; and everybody declares it sublime.”

Happily, those days of unwarranted excess are largely behind us. Nowadays, especially during the month of December – strange thing, that, given that Handel intended Messiah to be performed during the Easter season – it is possible to hear a great number of performances, some with very economical forces, others with large choirs and orchestras, albeit mostly displaying the transparency and agility we have come to expect.

This year, once again, WholeNote readers will have ample opportunity to hear Handel’s iconic masterpiece. A quick perusal of GTA and southwestern Ontario listings yielded about 30 different productions, many of them offering multiple performances. In Toronto, you can hear historically informed performances by Tafelmusik; Against the Grain’s staged version has been generating a lot of attention recently; and the venerable Toronto Mendelssohn Choir and Toronto Symphony Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis will do a series of performances at Roy Thomson Hall. Indeed, the TMC/TSO reading will be recorded for commercial release by Chandos. Incidentally, the last time TMC/TSO recorded it was at Kitchener’s Centre in the Square back in 1986. During one particularly fraught session, soprano Kathleen Battle stormed out of the hall, taking refuge in her hotel room. It took all of Andrew’s charm and seductive wiles to persuade the diva to return and complete the session. If, during this year’s performances, you see the maestro crossing his fingers, you’ll know why!

My own experience of conducting Messiah goes back half a century. Before that, aged 10 or 11, I first heard it performed live in a small town in Manitoba and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. Mind you, I was quite familiar with the music even then. The annual live CBC broadcast from Massey Hall with Sir Ernest MacMillan conducting was de rigueur listening in our farmhouse. And most years, our local church choir would attempt the Hallelujah Chorus. The best part was waiting to see which overwrought tenor or bass would come in early during the big general pause close to the end! We were rarely disappointed.

Messiah holds great personal significance for me. My very first date with the beautiful young woman who would later become my wife was a performance of Messiah. We were both ushers at the Civic Auditorium in Winnipeg, and during the performance we sat on the steps in the balcony. Lois Marshall was the soprano soloist.

Over the years I’ve conducted about 120 performances, most of them in Canada, but also a few in Europe and one memorable one in China, more about which later. There are conductors who dread the notion of directing yet another Messiah, but I am not among them. For me, each new performance of this glorious music is an eagerly anticipated event, an opportunity to discover another layer of meaning in this inexhaustible work.

Things go wrong from time to time in Messiah performances. Somebody faints or is sick on stage, soloists show up late or not at all (yep, that’s happened to me). One soloist inadvertently locked himself into a church washroom, delaying the start of the performance by a few minutes until we could extricate him. An image that will forever remain in my memory is of three soloists and me struggling to do up the fly of our tenor who somehow managed to get his zipper stuck. The expectant audience was treated to some spontaneous offstage hilarity as we dealt with this little existential crisis.

And then there was the Hammond organ incident. It was one of my first Messiah performances. We were in a small rural Manitoba church, said sanctuary having been adorned with a Hammond electric organ (remember those?). Well, we got through Part One without incident. Then, in Part Two, where things start to get really serious, there was a short circuit in the accursed instrument, and the rhumba rhythm kicked in. It was surely the first time such a decidedly secular element had been heard in that place of worship. My organist’s frantic ministrations were to no avail. The Spanish dance continued. “He was despised” with rhumba accompaniment is, shall we say, unique! By this time the audience was rolling on the floor. Finally, we had to shut the instrument down and continue with the piano which, mercifully, was to hand. I concluded this was divine wrath visited upon a parish that would sully its place of worship with a Hammond!

Only once have I had to fire a soloist the day before the concert, an alto who just wasn’t up to Handel’s demands. Enter Catherine Robbin at the very last minute, visibly pregnant with her first child. It was the first of many times we worked together, and of course she sang like an angel. There was one Messiah where Ben Heppner and Daniel Taylor graced the same stage. Their duet “O death, where is thy sting?” is the only time Canada’s leading Heldentenor and countertenor have ever sung together. It was pure gold! In April 2014 I conducted a Messiah performance in Waterloo with the Nota Bene Baroque Players & Singers. It was a deeply personal moment for my tenor soloist, Michael Schade. His father, already quite ill and confined to a wheelchair, was able to attend. Hans Schade passed away a month or so later. And shortly after that, Michael’s mother, Liesl, died quite unexpectedly. That Messiah was the last time they heard their illustrious son.

But of all my Messiah experiences, there is one that stands out from all the rest. In 1999 I was invited to participate in an international arts festival in Kunming, China. (In 2012 and 2013 I would return to that fabled city to teach at the Yunnan Arts University and to conduct the Kunming Symphony Orchestra.) To my amazement, the festival organizers wanted a performance of Messiah. The Kunming Symphony Orchestra was eager to play, but I would have to bring my own choir, Consort Caritatis. Maggie and I travelled to Kunming about ten days prior to the festival to give me sufficient time to rehearse the orchestra which was unfamiliar with the baroque style. We had 60 hours of rehearsal time. They responded quickly and with great enthusiasm.

During our stay in Kunming, we learned about China’s minorities or distinct ethnic groups. In addition to the dominant Han group, there are 55 minorities, many of which are concentrated in the mountains of southern China. One of these groups, the Miao people, had been visited by what we think must have been Methodist missionaries sometime during the late 19th century. These missionaries taught the musically illiterate Miao to sing extensive sections of Messiah, by rote, in four-part harmony! And they continue to sing these excerpts to this day.

Of course I was determined to meet them. It turned out that word had reached them high in the mountains that a choir from Canada would be coming to Kunming to perform the entire oratorio. A contingent of 20 or so from one village made the arduous four-hour journey on foot, then ox cart, and finally, bus. The performance being completely sold out weeks in advance, they came for the dress rehearsal. As the rehearsal proceeded, I could see that they were transfixed by what they were hearing. They had never before heard an orchestra, so this was a revelation for them. Not sure exactly which movements they knew, I was confident that they must surely be familiar with the Hallelujah Chorus.

When we got to that point, I stopped the rehearsal and invited the Miao mountain people to join us onstage. I had them stand among my singers and we sang together. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room! The Chinese television crew who were covering the entire festival were dumbfounded. These people live very much on the margins of Chinese society, and yet here they were, obviously bonding with a group of fellow musicians from 12 time zones away. The TV people insisted on doing a mini-documentary, which was promptly telecast throughout the People’s Republic to a potential audience of 1.4 billion! The sold-out performance itself was an unqualified success. Everyone in the audience had a cellphone. Hundreds of calls were made during that performance, audience members holding up their phones so people at home could hear the concert as well.

As part of that festival, I was invited to give a lecture on Messiah at the Yunnan Arts University. Seventy-five students and faculty listened intently as I held forth on the musical and theological aspects. In the Q & A which followed, a young student got to his feet and said to me, “Mr. Dyck, when you conduct Handel’s Messiah, do you have Christmas in your heart?” I was deeply moved by the honest simplicity and the profundity of the question. It was a wonderful reminder to me never to take this great masterpiece for granted.

All that was in 1999. Thirteen years later, when I returned to Kunming, people would walk up to me, smiling and humming bits of Messiah. Handel’s magic had taken root in one of the most remote parts of China, oblivious to time and place. And of course this music of promise and joy and redemption continues to nourish us year after year. Enjoy this season’s sumptuous Messiah banquet. Hallelujah! 

Howard Dyck is a Canadian broadcaster, conductor and music educator.

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