The Hammock Papers: Handel's Messiah in his own hand

24 December 2009

Handel's Messiah in his own hand

From The Guardian...
Hallelujah! What a Christmas present from the British Library: a chance to peer into the inner workings of Handel's Messiah, with a selection of pages from the composer's draft score of 1741 available for free at their online gallery. Actually, "draft" is something of a misnomer: what you'll see (and read about, and hear) at the British Library site comes pretty close to the final version we all know and love. The top tunes of the Messiah are all here, from Ev'ry Valley to the final Amen, laid down in Handel's magnificently energetic scrawl. As the British Library commentary points out, it might seem like a superhuman feat that Handel conceived the entire oratorio from beginning to end in 24 short days in the summer of 1741, but that's entirely in keeping with what we know about the composer's working practices. In fact, he finished another huge oratorio, Samson, by the end of October the same year.

The revelation of this Messiah score is the thousands of corrections and rubbings-out you can see. Handel didn't get everything right first time, and, in the changes he makes, you get a rare insight into his dynamic compositional process. There's even a dramatic ink-spillage on one of the pages, making the music almost illegible.

The miraculous thing about the Messiah is the way it's become enmeshed in our collective Christmas consciousness, and these pages are the place it all started. It's a privilege to see them. Maybe next year, the British Library will make the whole score available. Until then – the New Year, that is – have a happy, Handelian Christmas.

Start here, and with a safe, simple download you will see Handel's own hand as it wrote The Messiah.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL