Handel’s Messiah
For this week’s blog post, the discussion will be about Handel’s Messiah and the observations or questions that are asked and seen. The primary source that was found, is a program of a concert discovered in the New York Philharmonic database. The program states what the content was, the date and time and place. On January 14, 1854, starting at 8:00pm within the halls of Broadway Tabernacle Manhattan New York. The same question that I asked, was also asked for the Orfeo piece. The program has other composers such as Schumann, Schubert, Weber, Beethoven and Mendelssohn and yet why? Why not put on an entire production of Handel’s Messiah? Why resort to only one song or one piece at a time? This answer was given by a peer named Tiana and a Smithsonian magazine. Messiah cannot be performed entirely as a grand concert. This is because no hall has the necessary amount of funds for a grand production. In the Smithsonian article, it is said that the Messiah was so great in sound and so great in production, that women were told to come in dresses without hoops in order to make more room for the amount of people flooding in. Handel’s Messiah is a massive production on such a grand scale. However, that does not stop halls from performing some of the pieces in small portions because it is considered Handel’s greatest masterpiece.