I'M AMUSED to see that, when it attempts to re-create the sound of the original performance of Handel's Messiah this week, the Irish Baroque Orchestra will be conducted by a man called "Gary Cooper".
He is apparently no relation to the famous actor. But in the context of the Messiah's premiere, there is a certain aptness to his name. Because although modern audiences are used to concerts being staged at night (and the IBO will follow this practice) the first performance of Handel's Messiah was held - yes, you guessed it - at midday. Or High Noon, if you prefer.
There were good reasons for this, not least that in the impoverished, ill-lit, and crime-ridden Dublin of 1742, much of the city was a no-go area after dark; at least for anyone with money. The attendance for the premiere in Fishamble Street certainly fell into that category. Handel's own description, in a letter to his librettist, would have had a contemporary pickpocket or highwayman licking his lips:
". . .the audience being composed (besides the Flower of Ladies of Distinction and other People of the greatest quality) of so many Bishops, Deans, Heads of the Colledge , the most eminent people in the Law and the Chancellor, Auditor General tc. all which are very much taken with the poetry".
Most of these would have been targets for the city's "footpads": horseless highwaymen, whose specialities included laying a sort-of lasso on a dark pavement and, whenever a victim stood in the loop, yanking him off his feet into an even darker alleyway, before depriving him of his money or his life, or both.
In a 19th century book, Ireland Sixty Years Ago, JE Walsh records one such attack in Bride Street: then as now a mere stone's throw from Fishamble Street, where the quality gathered in such numbers.
In emulating the original performance, Gary Cooper and his colleagues will limit themselves to using the authentic instrumentation of the period; which is probably just as well. A fuller reconstruction of the event would be a logistical nightmare.
We like to think that traffic is worse now everywhere than it used to be. But preparations for the 1742 performance included making Fishamble St one-way only for the day. The Operation Freeflow also extended to a complete ban from the street of Sedan chairs, which the rich were carried about on in those times, and which had to be brought to the theatre's rear, via Copper Alley, instead.
To minimise traffic jams or accidents within the hall, and to maximise capacity, gentlemen were requested not to wear their swords for the performance, nor ladies their hooped skirts. And to improve the flow of air in the theatre, a revolutionary ventilation system was introduced, involving the removal of a pane of glass from the top of each window.
Despite all the potential hazards, within and without, the premiere was a triumph; although the promoters helped ensure fate was on their side by giving all proceeds to charity: Mercer's Hospital, the Infirmary on Inn's Quay, and the Musical Society for the Relief of Imprisoned Debtors all benefiting to the tune of £127 each.
This may or may not have appeased fate, but it helped secure the co-operation of the influential and notoriously cranky Dean of St Patrick's, Jonathan Swift. The charities were all dear to his heart, which was more than could be said about the music. When singers from his cathedral choir had taken part in one of Handel's first Dublin concerts, several months previously, he ranted:
" whereas it hath been reported that I gave licence to certain vicars to assist at a club of fiddlers in Fishamble Street, I do hereby annul and vacate the said licence, intreating my said Sub-Dean and chapter to punish such vicars as shall ever appear there, as songsters, fiddlers, pipers, trumpeters, drummers, drum-majors, or in any sonal quality, according to the flagitious aggravations of their respective disobedience, rebellion, perfidy and ingratitude."
The Dean apart, Handel enjoyed in Dublin a more liberal attitude to religious music than in strait-laced England, where it was still considered scandalous to have the Gospel sung by mere actresses. In general, Ireland was a welcome escape from London, where his career had been dogged by everything from ill-health to politics.
Where the Tories championed Handel, the Whigs preferred the Italian composer Giovanni Bononcini, who for a time was regarded as so much Handel's equal that their rivalry was lampooned in a verse (by poet John Byrom), giving the English language a new phrase.
"Some say, compar'd to Bononcini/That Mynheer Handels but a Ninny/Others aver, that he to Handel/Is scarcely fit to hold a Candle/Strange all this Diff'rence should be/Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee."
Bononcini's fame has since dwindled; whereas the piece first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742 revived Handel's career, elevated him beyond any Tweedle-dum comparisons, and earned him musical immortality. No wonder he wrote gratefully of the "politeness of this generous nation"; and, in the years that remained him, would look back on the nine months he spent in Ireland as a golden period of his life.
The Irish Baroque Orchestra will present Handel's Messiah tonight in the Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity, Waterford; tomorrow night in St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin; and on Friday in the Collegiate Church of St Nicholas, Galway. Further details are at www.irishbaroqueorchestra.ie