Handel’s Messiah Performed by
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At a time of year when nearly every merchant is pushing their wares on American public in grand spectacle of Christmas, it's difficult to find an oasis of sanity - a place where meaning of holiday hasn't been shoved aside in favor of bell ringing Santas, rehashed Muzak versions of tired carols, and grouchy, harried shoppers all trying to rush through their days.
But such an oasis can be found in music of San Francisco Symphony's version of Handel's Messiah, performed this year at Flint Center on campus of DeAnza College in Cupertino, California, about an hour south of San Francisco. Once we entered hall, we felt world of craziness drift away.
Previous performances of Messiah that I've heard have been high volume events with sopranos in rafters and choruses blowing out back doors. I was pleased to see that conductor Christopher Seaman had chosen a more reverent and controlled version of this widely interpreted piece.
Handel wrote Messiah during years of 1741-45, and performed it first to an indifferent London reception. The piece was revived, however, in 1749, and Handel continued to revise piece significantly throughout rest of his life. He lengthened, shortened, and removed many sections, and rewrote portions to match voices of local singers. After Handel's death in 1759, many composers have rewritten score to suit tastes of time; some of most famous revisions are Mozart's (1789) and Ebenezer Proust's (1902).
In last 35 years, symphonies have been making attempts to return to Handel's spirit for piece, though not always to letter - or "note," as it were. Music writer Michael Steinberg says that "Two approaches to performing Messiah are available. You can reconstruct one of forms in which it was actually given by Handel between 1742 and 1759 (or, for that matter, 1741 score), or you can treat score with its variants as a soft of kit from which to build an edition of your own. Like most modern conductors and editors, Mr. Seaman takes latter, synthetic approach."
