The Messiah

 

Issue No. 290 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Dec. 23, 2013) features a special Christmas greeting to my faithful readers—and a 1984 color commentary on a “book” from my all-time ideal bookshelf.  And be sure to watch for my December 31 eNews with my 2013 Book-of-the-Year selection and nine other top-pick books from my 2013 reviews.   ----------------------------------------------------------- Merry Christmas!  Last April, I reviewed a brilliant coffee table book, My Ideal Bookshelf (read my review) which prompted me to select my own Top-10 list of favorite books. Six readers also sent me their lists. One treasure on my all-time Top-10 list is The Messiah: An Oratorio, by G.F. Handel.  So in this issue I’m re-gifting what I shared in my 1984 Christmas card about that poignant experience. Merry Christmas! Doing-It-Together Messiah “Is this seat taken?” I asked, fumbling over his feet in the section marked “B” for basses. “Nope. Do you sing bass, too? Have you ever done this before? I hope so, because this is my first time,” he laughed nervously. “Mine too,” I smiled, showing him my mint condition vocal score, all 252 pages. “Good,” I thought, and then worried about who would sit on my left. Probably some pompous virtuoso with bushy raised eyebrows, who would sneer every time I missed a note. It was almost 7:30 p.m. on this freezing Chicago Friday. The tickets were three bucks a head and over a thousand voices were clearing their throats in the Norris Cultural Arts Center auditorium in St. Charles, Illinois. On stage, the incessant whining and percussion bursts of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra tuned-up for this annual event. The crowd hushed as polite applause began in the soprano section and then, like a football stadium wave, spread over to us basses, as we honored the arrival of the evening’s four soloists.  “Good planning,” I thought, noting that the alto had a red gown and the soprano had chosen a Christmas green formal.  The bass and tenor, of course, wore routine tails—with collars that accentuated their double chins, and it seemed to me, prevented full-throated swallowing. Our celebrity conductor, Margaret Hillis, followed to the thunder of grateful applause.  Two nights before, she had done similar duty at Chicago’s Orchestra Hall with a cast of thousands. The P.A. didn’t work, but her booming voice didn’t need this temperamental technology. “Welcome to our annual performance of the ‘Do-It-Yourself Messiah.’ How many of you are singing this for the first time?” I looked both ways and decided I could raise my hand, up to my chin maybe. More than half of us were rookies. A minute before, I’d learned from the bass on my left that he played the cello in the Elgin orchestra, but was sitting it out this year to enjoy the choral experience.  “At least I’ll know when to come in,” I mused, leaning a little closer to his side than the former jazz band trumpet player on my right. I had impressed the horn blower sufficiently when I recounted my stint as a church choir director in my college days.  “You mean you can read music?” he asked in awe. “Yeah,” I answered, trying to sound humble, so he wouldn’t expect too much help from me during the challenging parts. And there are challenging parts. One reviewer recently observed, “Handel may have been making a little joke by setting lyrics about Christ’s ‘easy’ yoke to a challenging fugue!” Ms. Hillis rehearsed one difficult section with us for two minutes max, and before we were ready, the December 7, 1984, Norris Center whoever-is-here-sings thousand-voice audience became the performers for G.F. Handel’s The Messiah, perhaps one of the most loved and enduring musical classics of all time. The full, strong melody of the overture to The Messiah filled the auditorium as hundreds of nervous performers tapped toes and fingers to keep pace with the orchestra.  The first recitative for tenor, “Comfort Ye My People,” was both familiar and soothing. At page 16, Ms. Hillis turned from the orchestra and motioned for us to stand. The altos, rich-sounding and bountiful, stirred our anticipation with their three-measure head start. “And the glory, the glory of the Lord.” The sopranos, tenors and our bass section join in: “And the glory, the glory of the Lord shall be re-e-e-ve-e-e-e-al-ed.” I was singing The Messiah! It didn’t matter that the performers were the only audience. We were continuing a musical tradition, begun by the composer in 1742.  The comforting and deep meaning of the words from Isaiah, Matthew and Romans were a solace to my soul, as they had been to other performers and audiences over the last 200 years. “Thank you, Father,” I prayed, “for granting such genius to George Frideric Handel and for preserving this masterpiece.” The soprano’s air, “Come unto Him, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and He shall give you rest,” embroidered its message on my heart. One thousand responded, “His yoke is easy and His burden is light.”  All evening, we drank deeply of both words and music. Sometime after 10 p.m., throats weakened, we sang page 252’s final “Amen.” Our applause energized us. We smiled, eyes cheering, and called the conductor and soloists back for two curtain calls. “Encore! Encore!” we demanded. We needed no cue from Ms. Hillis, reminding us to remain standing. The orchestra’s introduction to the “Hallelujah!” chorus renewed us in just three measures: “Hallelujah! For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ: And He shall reign for ever and ever. King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, HALLELUJAH!” - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Click on the title to order the 252-page musical score from Amazon of The Messiah: An Oratorio for Four-Part Chorus of Mixed Voices, Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass Soli and Piano, by G. F. Handel.      MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE:  Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations Note: This is the NEW location for John Pearson's Buckets Blog. Slowly (!), the previous 650+ blogs posted (between 2006 and 2025) will gradually populate this blogsite, along with new book reviews each month. ECFA BLOG on “Governance of Christ-centered Organizations”   Add your thoughts to John's blog post, "The Peaceful Urgency Continuum," with this wisdom from John Ortberg: “Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart.”