Preface

Summary

And from that time to the present, this great work has been heard in all parts of the kingdom with increasing reverence and delight; it has fed the hungry, clothed the naked, fostered the orphan, and enriched succeeding managers of the Oratorios, more than any single production in this or any country.

[Burney, An Account of the Musical Performances, ‘Sketch of the Life of Handel’, p. 27]

Charles Burney's assessment of the position that Handel's Messiah had gained in the English-speaking world during the forty years since its first performance has been reinforced during the succeeding two centuries. Under modern economic conditions, charities and ‘managers’ can no longer anticipate automatic profits from performances of Messiah, yet the work has retained its hold over performers and audiences, and the oratorio has a ‘classic’ status among the artefacts of western culture. The reasons for this are various, related partly to wider musical and social practices and partly to the nature of the work itself. Burney was writing at a moment when Messiah was about to take on a new musical guise – or disguise – as a celebratory work for mass performance at the first Handel Commemoration. During the second half of the nineteenth century, when choral singing became a popular movement in Britain, more people came into active contact with Messiah than ever before, through large-scale performances in churches and concert halls in London and the provinces.