MANY PEOPLE ARE MOVED TO LISTEN to George Frederic Handel’s “Messiah: An Oratorio” at this time of year. Composed originally in 1741 and then improved over the ensuing years, it consists of three parts depicting the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus the Christ using a text compiled from the King James Version of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. Written in 24 days, this 260-page score is a massive work lasting more than two hours. But don’t let that put you off! 🙂 You can always listen to it in parts.

Naturally, with such a popular work, there have been many recordings. However, for baroque music I always prefer to hear performances by ensembles using instruments constructed during that period (about 1600 to 1750) or identical facsimiles constructed later, plus using baroque performance practice. Thus, you have gut strings on the stringed instruments, brass with no valves (in this instance, trompets), and lovely reedy, woody sounds from the woodwinds. The effect (which is played using the tuning frequency A = 415Hz, as it was in Handel’s day) is so much clearer and the tempi are much faster than equivalent playing with modern instrument ensembles. So, to choose a version to share with you of Handel’s Messiah Oratorio, although there are a number of great performances on period instruments, I have to go for one from 31 years ago, with the great Stephen Cleobury directing the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, and the Brandenburg Consort, which is led by period instruments pioneer, Roy Goodman. The sound is remarkably good for a video from that date.

Stephen Cleobury is long gone now. And all those boy choristers will be in their 40s now and the older ones in their 50s. The soloists could now be in their 70s! Time is a machine. I was a follower of Roy Goodman and his Brandenburg Consort in the 1980s when it was the exciting heady days of the Early Music Movement, when manuals on performance practice from that era were being discovered in remote libraries in Eastern Europe and the like. Once one has heard baroque music played on period instruments which were actually made in the era, or are facsimilies, there is no going back to listening to the stodgy sound of modern ensembles for that era of music. I remember when I first heard Il Giardino Armonico playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons on their 1994 disc. I nearly fell off my chair with amazement at the power of the playing using techniques that I had never heard before. It is a wonderful thing to listen to the music of J.S. Bach, Telemann, Vivaldi, Handel, Rameau, Lully, Corelli, Purcell, Monteverdi, Scarlatti (plus many more) and hear the music almost as those composers would have heard it too.

Anyway, I will leave it there and recommend this performance by Cleobury directing the King’s College Choir, Cambridge and the Brandenburg Consort, with Goodman leading the Consort. I know people who are listening to this music on continuous repeat today and tomorrow! Some of the choral pieces will be familiar. The overall composition is majestic. Enjoy… 💝