Handel's Messiah - background reading
To paraphrase Wikipedia:
Background and definitions
Messiah is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel. The text was compiled from the King James Bible and the Coverdale Psalter by Charles Jennens. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742 and received its London premiere a year later. The oratorio gained in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known and most frequently performed choral works in Western music.
Handel famously completed the composition in a mere 24 days, (although this was the vocal parts and the continuo accompaniment - the completion of the full orchestration did take longer).
Handel was born in 1685, the same year as the composers JS Bach and Domenico Scarlatti. Handel and Bach were both German, but their careers were quite different. Bach held positions in the church and composed an incredible amount of religious music.
Handel held various positions including as musician to the German prince George, the Elector of Hanover. Handel went on to settle in England as a musician in the Royal Court for Queen Anne, essentially abandoning his post in Hanover. This went well… until George of Hanover became King George I of England. The Water Music served to sooth the King’s annoyance at Handel abandoning his post in Hanover, and Handel remained in England until his death.
Bach married twice and had 30 children, Handel never married nor had any children. The two men also never met, although they were probably aware of each other’s music.
Messiah was Handel’s sixth oratorio. Although its structure resembles that of opera, it is not in dramatic form; there are no impersonations of characters and no direct speech. Instead, Jennens's text is an extended reflection on Jesus as the Messiah called Christ. The text begins in Part I with prophecies by Isaiah and others, and moves to the annunciation to the shepherds. In Part II, Handel concentrates on the Passion of Jesus and ends with the Hallelujah chorus. In Part III, he covers Paul's teachings on the resurrection of the dead and Christ's glorification in heaven.
Handel wrote Messiah for modest vocal and instrumental forces, with optional alternate settings for many of the individual numbers. In the years after his death, the work was adapted for performance on a much larger scale, with giant orchestras and choirs. In other efforts to update it, its orchestration was revised and amplified, such as Mozart's Der Messias. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the trend has been towards reproducing a greater fidelity to Handel's original intentions, although "big Messiah" productions continue to be mounted.
The autograph manuscript of the oratorio is preserved in the British Library.
Messiah is an Oratorio
An oratorio is a musical composition with dramatic or narrative text for choir, soloists and orchestra or other ensemble. It is similar to an opera, but is not usually staged or costumed. Oratorios were common in the period of Lent, when lavish productions were prohibited by the church.
Messiah is unusual, though in the sense that the soloists do not even take on character roles, (for example, in Mendelssohn's Elijah, the baritone solo sings the role of Elijah).
Structurally, Messiah contains two instrumental pieces (the overture which opens the work and a pastorale depicting the shepherds in the fields at the first Christmas). Most of the work consists of sets of recitatives, arias and choruses.
Recitative
Recitative is a style of delivery in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms and delivery of ordinary speech. Recitative does not repeat lines as formally composed songs do. They resemble sung ordinary speech more than a formal song.
Messiah contains both secco (dry) recitatives, often accompanied only by harpsichord and a bass instrument and accompanied recitative with fuller orchestration. Secco recitatives are more improvisational and declamatory and accompanied recitatives are more song-like.
Secco recitatives often end with delayed cadences. This is where final chords are directed separately after the soloist has finished singing.
Aria
An aria or air is a piece for a solo voice. Arias are often found in opera, oratorio or as stand-alone songs. The term was originally used to refer to any expressive melody, usually performed by a singer setting a text.
Chorus
These are pieces for the full body of singers accompanied by the instrumentalists. The choruses often take the form of a a fugue or at least contain fugal passages.
So what is a fugue?
Fugues are a type of musical composition where a theme (called a subject) is sounded by one of the voice parts or instruments. This is then repeated by the other voice parts or instruments in other keys. As Messiah has a four-part chorus (Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass voices) most fugues have four voices.
There are various types of fugue. Fugues are some of the hardest types of musical structures to write. Handel and Bach were masters of these forms and later composers such as Mozart and Haydn wrote in these forms and Beethoven incorporated complicated forms such as double and triple fugues into his symphonies and sonatas.
For the purposes of performing the fugues in the Messiah, it is worth being familiar with the subject of the fugue and the text that is set to this theme.
For further reading on any of these topics, Wikipedia is a good start:
Handel Messiah Oratorio Recitative Aria Fugue
Rehearsal aids can be found here