Up to this point my Great Music series has concentrated on piano music. Some of you might think that as a piano teacher, I might be biased toward that genre of music. Well- you are right. However, I love just about any kind of music from Classical, to Broadway and movie music to pop music. This week I am going to introduce another love of mine, choral music. For this I have chosen probably the most famous and most performed piece of music in the world – Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.
Every Christmas, there are tens of thousands of churches and school choruses around the world who perform this particular piece. With proper orchestration and a decent size choir, this piece is bound to produce goosebumps for everyone in the audience. Like the Ten Commandments, I swear this piece of music was personally handed by G-d to George Handel.
Handel was born in Halle, Germany in 1685 in the same era as Bach. Even at a young age, Handel had music in his soul. His father was determined that George not waste his time on music since that would not lead to an illustrative life. George would sneak around to neighbors to play whatever instrument was in the house, Violin, Oboe, Harpsichord etc.
It was during this childhood period when able to play a musical instrument he began to use his musical time to compose music. Initially, he concentrated on composing operas which were all the rave at the time. As a young adult, he was composing operas full time even though his works met with indifferent success. By 1707 Handel left for Venice, Italy where Italians were especially fond of operas. After three years in Italy, Handel was told the Opera world was now centered in London so George moved there in 1710.
While in London, Handel found that the truth was London was all about all kinds of music and found that his cantatas for choir and orchestra were much better received and rewarded than his operas. It is Handel’s London period when his best musical works were created. The particular piece of this week, the Hallelujah Chorus, is part of his massive cantata “The Messiah” which was composed in 1742. The words to “The Messiah” were taken from the King James Bible and compiled by Charles Jennens.
Subsequent to composing “The Messiah” Handel wrote 15 more major cantatas of the same scope as the Messiah but none have had any kind of long lasting impact. However, The Messiah will be front and center for eternity.
Here are the links:
The key portion of the Messiah is the Hallelujah Chorus. Here is a rendition of that piece by my favorite choral group of all time – The Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
For those who have 2+ hours to spend here is the complete “Messiah”