Yes- I remember this post well. Lots and lots in there that I quite agree with. I don’t think we’re too far apart, and perhaps my post seems to be balanced a bit more towards “Messiah isn’t a drama” because I’m coming at it from the perspective of how to make the piece work in performance, which means knowing where the traps are for the performer. If you’re doing St Matthew Passion with a fantastic evangelist, you (the conductor) don’t have to worry about the audience feeling a sense of momentum and investment in the story itself. On the other hand, in Messiah, as you rightly point out, the drama is commented on and mediated about (perhaps by your chorus of villagers) rather than narrrated. Handel must have surely known what he was leaving out of this piece- he was an opera composer first and foremost. That doesn’t mean he didn’t want the listener to be invested in the story, but that the story, by itself, isn’t what he wants us to think of most. He wants us to think about the meaning of the story- to contemplate and experience…..

Thanks again-

Ken

ACD

RE, your, Along these lines, Messiah is an interesting case. Handel was one of the very greatest and most gifted dramatists who ever lived. The fact that the piece doesn’t “work” purely as a drama (there’s no supsense, no character development (almost no characters!), no arc)…

That’s the standard take on Messiah all right. But do take a look at the following piece, please, and see whether it changes your thinking a bit:

http://www.soundsandfury.com/soundsandfury/2005/12/new_reading_of_.html

ACD

AC- Good to hear form you – it’s been a while! Your comments left me with two things I wanted to say…
1- I intentionally didn’t say ‘music drama” because not all works with verbal texts are dramas. I could have said something clumsy that was closer to my actual meaning, but gave up at finding a concise way of saying “any piece of notated music which combines music with written language….”

2- Along these lines, Messiah is an interesting case. Handel was one of the very greatest and most gifted dramatists who ever lived. The fact that the piece doesn’t “work” purely as a drama (there’s no supsense, no character development (almost no characters!), no arc) is not because Handel didn’t know how to set a cracking good story, but because his aims were a little different. As I said above, it’s this balance between balance and contemplation you have to come to terms with as a conductor. Bach’s St Matthew Passion is a sublimely dramatic work where all of the meditaions and contemplations are seamlessly integrated into a single, convincing dramatic arc. Messiah is almost the opposite- the story comes through in spite of the fact that the libretto takes away any sense of narrative direction. This is not a flaw of the work, but a challenge for the performer…. I wouldn’t calll it a music-drama so much as a music-narrative-meditation….

I do like the Mozart orchestration a lot and would love to do it some day. A couple years ago I heard an orchestration by Parry or Stanford for about 130 piece orchestra and brass bands with 400 member chorus played by an augmented Royal Philharmonic and about 6 choirs conducted by Malcom Sargent on the radio. I bet that would be a blast to do…..

Note- I’ve added another standard performance practice thingy as 5e above…..

Thanks everyone!
Ken

I would recommend trying the Mozart orchestration one of these days (he gave us a real viola part). I really like the piece in German (especially since we all know the English so well, so it is really easy to translate on the spot).

Also, regarding #4, it is really nice to be able to vibrate, especially when the mood is right. It does help to keep the music interesting, and it really helps in passages when you have to play really softly in order to support (and not overpower) a singer, to ease the kind of physical tension that can build up during a performance of such a long work.

ACD

The Messiah is an amazingly robust piece, and can thrive under Handel’s orchestrations, with one-to-a-part orchestras or with section, or with Mozart’s marvelous re-orchestration. So, I suppose it did well with Foss, too.

That’s not quite right, is it. Better would be, “You have to study the libretto and the relationship between the words and the music in this piece in exactly the same methodical, critical and creative way as you would for any musical drama (or music-drama).”

ACD

Vibrato is an ornament used to create expressive variety in the music. In baroque music, this means we start from non-vibrato because you ADD vibrato to create interest. This does not mean you play baroque music without vibrato, it means you encourage the players to think about when, why and how to add it, and to look for every moment in the score that is helped by it…

YES YES!! Thank GOD there are still some real musicians our there who actually GET this!!!! In ALL music!