This month thousands of people throughout the country have been, or will be, enjoying pre-Christmas presentations of Handel's Messiah, writes Tony Williams.
Nearly all these performances employ amateur choristers - and some are also "sing along" events, in which members of the audience are invited to bring their own scores and join in the choruses. While the musical value of this approach may be debated, it does underline the modern-day acceptance that Handel's masterpiece is for everyone, whether as an appreciative listener or an enthusiastic participant. This was not always so.
Take the very first performance of Messiah at the New Music Hall in Fishamble Street on April 13th, 1742, an occasion of which Dubliners are rightly proud. The social composition of the audience on that day may be deduced from the request made to the ladies to come without hoops in their skirts and the gentlemen without their swords, enabling 700 rather than the initial limit of 600 to attend. Only people of high rank were present. The early London performances at Covent Garden and elsewhere were similarly exclusive gatherings, led on one occasion by King George II, who famously rose to his feet during the Hallelujah Chorus. In the English provinces Messiah began its long association with the Three Choirs Festival in 1757, but in sister venues of Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester too, the audience consisted of wealthy landowners, aristocrats, bishops, clergy, and other notables of the day.
It was in a tiny village in my home county of Leicestershire that Messiah took its first faltering steps towards becoming a popular, "socially inclusive" work - on September 27th, 1759, just a few months after Handel's death. It was remarkable for Messiah to be presented at the time in a country church, and it was the first performance ever in a parish church. It was all down to the local Church of England rector, William Hanbury, a man of many talents, a botanist, horticulturist, arboriculturist, music lover, philanthropist, and visionary. His plan was to create a great charity to fund a public library, a school, and even more ambitious projects - works for the glory of God and the improvement of humankind. The main sources of money for Hanbury's charity were to be the nurseries and tree plantations he established in the area. But to kick-start his grand project he hit on the idea of putting on Messiah. He gathered together the finest instrumentalists, soloists and choristers from Oxford University, under the direction of Dr William Hayes, professor of music. There were extensive preparations for the great event. An organ was built and installed in St Peter's Church, and a gallery erected to encompass the musicians on either side of the organ.
Hanbury followed the pattern of previous Messiah performances in charging ticket prices that excluded the common man or woman, in this case five shillings (admittedly much cheaper than the half-guinea demanded in Dublin). Thus his Messiah too, which took place in the afternoon, was attended by gentry - and the church doors were barricaded to keep out the locals, who crowded the entrances to pick up snatches of the glorious music. In the morning the villagers had been invited into the rehearsal, and they turned up, initially no doubt, out of curiosity: had those pipes, which had been placed in neat piles outside the church, really been made into an organ, or were they, as many suspected, firearms, to be used, as rumour had it, in a new Jacobite rising? But very soon they were fascinated and attracted by Handel's music. Hanbury himself was so impressed by the villagers' response to the music that he promised them a repeat performance of much of the oratorio to take place free of charge in the evening.
When the church doors were flung open at the end of the afternoon Messiah, and a highly satisfied congregation made its way outside, there was much pushing and bumping as the villagers began to scramble into the church. Inside there was chaos at first: to quote Hanbury's description of the crush, "many outcries were made by the fatter part of the rabble". But eventually things settled down, the music began and, having found some space for themselves, the villagers listened with rapt attention. Like the élite audience in the afternoon, the villagers too were deeply moved by what they heard, with "tears trickling down the faces of many", as Hanbury observed. Tribute should be paid to the stamina of the musicians who played and sang Messiah twice with scarcely a break.
After the afternoon performance, the gentry retired to large refreshment booths, where they tucked into the likes of venison pasties and huge ham pies, each measuring a yard in diameter - just two of the 104 dishes on offer. Later on, the villagers, having satisfied the inner man and woman, streamed into the booths and were treated to the left-overs.
September 27th, 1759 was a historic day, not just because Messiah was performed for the first time in a country church. More significantly still, it ceased to be a work exclusively for the well-to-do, and the taste for Handel's masterpiece which the "common people" first acquired on that day has grown steadily down the years.
As for the Hanbury's charity, it made no gains from the afternoon performance, for Hanbury found that his income from ticket sales just about covered his expenditure. Messiah had not yet become the work to put a smile on every choir treasurer's face.
A version of this article appeared in the programme for the recent performances of Messiah at the Helix, Dublin by Enchiriadis Treis.