^{BY ASHUTOSH KHANDEKAR | FIRST PUBLISHED 29 NOV 2025}

Few works in Western music have proved as infinitely adaptable, resilient, and continually renewed as George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. Written in just 24 days in the late summer of 1741, it remains one of the most extraordinary outbursts of white-hot creativity in musical history. The autograph manuscript – still in the British Library – shows the composer working with remarkable deftness. ‘Handel didn’t draft,’ conductor Laurence Cummings, a celebrated exponent of Handel’s music, told me. ‘He thought in ink.’ You sense this immediacy in the confident, florid sweep of Handel’s pen, with changes made only when necessary.

In spite of this appearance of confidence, Handel’s inspiration emerged at a moment of personal and artistic uncertainty. Italian opera, long the foundation of his London career, was faltering. Audiences were changing, finances were unstable, and the composer’s health had suffered. Out of this fragile moment came a work that, more than three centuries later, remains unusually responsive to the resources, imagination and circumstances of its performers and audiences.

The Dublin premiere of Messiah in April 1742 not only revived Handel’s prospects but also established itself as a cultural touchstone. The event was something of a civic sensation. Demand for seats at Neal’s Music Hall was so intense that organisers issued a public plea: gentlemen were asked to leave their swords at home, and ladies to set aside their hooped skirts so more people could be squeezed into the modest Fishamble Street venue. Nearly 700 listeners crowded in – far more than the hall was designed to hold – creating a packed (some said ‘suffocating’ atmosphere). Yet once the music began, the audience were palpably moved, many brought to tears during the most impassioned moments. The celebrated contralto Susannah Cibber’s performance of ‘He was despised’ was singled out for its ‘mighty oratorical expression’. The Anglican clergyman Patrick Delany was so moved that he is reported to have jumped up in the hall and cried out: ‘Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee!’

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^{Jakub Józef Orliński, joined by Laurence Equilbey and the Insula Orchestra, performs ‘He was despised’ from Handel’s Messiah, filmed at the Festival de Pâques Aix-en-Provence, April 2024.}

The press matched the crowd’s enthusiasm. Dublin headlines proclaimed that nothing of comparable power had ever been heard in the city. Critics fell over themselves to praise the precision of the orchestra and chorus, but it was the emotional force of Handel’s score that drew the most admiration. For Handel – who had lately faced fractious London audiences – the wholehearted Dublin response was a striking personal and artistic vindication.

The concert’s charitable purpose added to the work’s popularity. Proceeds were divided among two Dublin hospitals and a fund to release prisoners held for debt. In an era when debtors could languish indefinitely in jail, the money raised by Messiah secured the freedom of several detainees who had committed no crime except to be abjectly poor. Newspapers celebrated not only the music but the compassion behind it, noting that the performance had brought real relief to those in dire need.

Part of the work’s impact and versatility lies in the unusual nature of Charles Jennens’s libretto. Rather than provide a conventional narrative, he arranged biblical texts into a sequence that traces prophecy, incarnation, suffering, redemption, and thanksgiving. There is no narrative progression, no characters, no dramatic conflict. Instead, the listener moves through what scholar Ruth Smith famously called ‘a devotional architecture’ – built for reflection. In an age that can feel saturated with noise and speed, this contemplative approach has taken on new resonance.

Handel’s music engages vividly with Jennens’ choices of text, creating a coherent, empathetic sound-world that binds together the disparate sources. It’s not only the word setting that is evocative, however. Even the purely instrumental numbers have a rhetorical effect: the French-style overture possesses a solemn, measured grandeur, announcing that something important is about to happen; the ‘Pifa’ (Pastoral Symphony) movement with its gentle lilting rhythm, evokes a lyrical stillness that is soon stirred up by an excitable angel, followed by a ‘multitude of the heavenly host’, announcing Christ’s birth. Recitatives are direct and unfussy; arias illuminate our path through the work, taking us from joy to despair. Choruses act as solid pillars, inspiring us along our journey. Handel’s economy of means is part of why Messiah adapts so well across centuries and contexts: there is clarity and an absolute certainty at its core.

^{Pifa (‘Pastoral Symphony’) from Handel’s ‘Messiah’, performed by Dunedin Consort & John Butt.}

Handel himself never treated the work as fixed. Between the Dublin premiere in 1742 and his death in 1759, he revised it repeatedly. Scholars count between eight and twelve distinct versions, often falling into the Dublin, early-London, and late-London categories. These revisions were practical: Handel rewrote arias to suit particular singers, adjusted orchestral scoring for different venues, and shaped chorus sizes based on the forces available. For him, adaptability was part of the work’s nature.

The Foundling Hospital performances beginning in 1750 proved central to Messiah’s reputation among British audiences. Handel conducted annual benefit concerts supporting the institution’s work in caring for abandoned children, generating more than £1m in today’s money. These concerts established Messiah in London’s musical calendar, aligning it with philanthropy. The late Handel scholar and conductor Christopher Hogwood observed that the Foundling Hospital performances revealed ‘Handel the pragmatist and Handel the philanthropist in equal measure,’ and they helped give Messiah its public aura, as well as building on its reputation as a work with social purpose.

The ‘Hallelujah’ Chorus soon became the emblem of this public identity. Whether or not King George II stood at its first London performance, the gesture captured something of the music’s energy – part devotional, part civic. To this day, many British audiences still rise at that moment. It remains a small, but indicative sign of how deeply the piece has entered our habits and expectations in a concert setting.

Messiah’s emphasis started shifting towards the end of the 18th century, when Mozart re-orchestrated the piece with a more mellow sound palette, incorporating more wind and brass and bringing a classical elegance to Handel’s work, while detracting from its terse, unaffected drama. The 19th and early-20th centuries saw the work expand dramatically. Performances with hundreds or – in the case of Crystal Palace – thousands of singers turned it into a large-scale ritual of civic pride. These versions offered grandeur, though sometimes at the expense of the bracing economy and directness that gives Handel’s writing its power.

The historically informed performance (HIP) movement from the 1970s onwards recalibrated these grandiose Victorian traditions. Ensembles returned to smaller forces, natural trumpets, and a more text-centred approach. Christopher Hogwood’s influential 1980 recording with the Academy of Ancient Music brought together scholarship and musical immediacy. At its centre was Dame Emma Kirkby, whose pure, unaffected singing shaped a new listening imagination. ‘Jennens’s libretto is genius,’ she told me in a recent interview for Continuo Connect. ‘Numinous, humane, and far broader than religious zeal. It tells a deeply moving human story.’

^{Dame Emma Kirkby sings ‘Thou art gone up on high’ from Handel's Messiah | The Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood}

Today, Messiah thrives because it accommodates such a broad range of interpretations. Across the UK this December, well over 20 historically-informed performances, all listed on Continuo Connect, will explore its possibilities. In London, the London Handel Orchestra returns to St George’s, Hanover Square – Handel’s own parish church (4 Dec). The Sixteen bring their precision and transparency (9 Dec). The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment joins forces with the Philharmonia Chorus and outstanding soloists for a compelling account at Southbank Centre (12 Dec). The Academy of Ancient Music present a 3 Dec performance in Oxford then continue their long engagement with the work at the Barbican (15 Dec).

A particularly intriguing perspective this season comes from Christophe Rousset, one of a new roster of guest conductors at the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras (MCO). The ensemble tours the work in Italy and France before a final performance at St Martin-in-the-Fields (16 Dec) in London. Asked how he approaches MCO’s deeply rooted tradition of performing Messiah, Rousset is characteristically direct: ‘There might be a “tradition” for Messiah in England, but definitely not in France. When I conducted my first Matthew Passion, for example, I had no idea of any performance tradition, but my vision seemed to be all the more appreciated because I tried my best to stick to Bach’s text, with no other reference than my own knowledge of his harpsichord pieces and cantatas. I proposed the Messiah project to MCO after our first successful collaboration in 2024. The fact I’ve worked with the singers before helps to consolidate my style. But my views about the piece might surprise some of them! As you perhaps know, John Eliot Gardiner, the founder of MCO, stated that he didn’t want to perform Messiah anymore, so this is a good opportunity for me to take a fresh approach.’

As a French conductor taking on a work embedded in British sensibilities – culturally, textually, and musically – Rousset sees no barriers, only layers of lineage: ‘Handel was naturalised as an Englishman, but before that he was was Haendel – a European deeply impregnated by German polyphony and Italian opera of his time. Most of Messiah’s arias are in his operatic language, sometimes even looking towards a Neapolitan style, while the fugues have a fantastic architectural form, in a pure Germanic way.’

Many more historically-informed Messiah performances are scheduled beyond London: the Bellot Ensemble in Brighton highlights the freshness of chamber-scale artistry (6 Dec); Florilegium brings elegance to Winchester (6 Dec); Manchester Baroque offers an agile, exuberant reading (6 Dec); and Fiori Musicali continues its mission to present high-level Baroque performance to regional audiences with a performance in Northampton (23 Dec). Wild Arts tours their innovative dramatised production across England (2–18 Dec). In Scotland, the Dunedin Consort takes the work to Edinburgh (17 Dec), Perth (18 Dec) and Glasgow (19 Dec), also offering a family matinee ‘Children’s Messiah’ in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Contemporary reinterpretations also flourish: large-scale community ‘Messiah from Scratch’ events at the Royal Albert Hall; candlelit performances in repurposed industrial buildings; and occasional gospel-infused versions that reveal the emotional flexibility of Handel’s writing. As baritone Roderick Williams observed, ‘You can sing Messiah in a grand opera house or in a small parish church, and it feels equally alive. It’s an incredibly democratic piece of music.’

The emotional range remains extraordinary: the ecstatic joy of ‘For unto us a child is born’; the intimate reassurance of ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’; the austere ‘Worthy is the Lamb.’ These moments resonate across cultures and beliefs. For musicians, the craft is endlessly rewarding: elegant continuo lines, expressive melodic contours, and choruses shaped with architectural intelligence. For audiences, the journey from tension to resolution continues to exert a powerful appeal.

^{‘For unto us a child is born’ performed by The Sixteen & Harry Christophers}

This season’s performances – from London and Northampton to Worchester and Manchester, Brighton and Chichester to Glasgow and Perth – show how far the work has travelled since that eagerly anticipated Dublin premiere in 1742, and how readily it invites renewal to this day. Few pieces from the period address so many different artistic questions: of scale, colour, scholarship, dramatic emphasis, and spiritual framing. Messiah welcomes these questions rather than resisting them.

Perhaps this is its meaning today: Handel’s Messiah endures not as an immutable, untouchable monument, but as a living, breathing text – put to the test, reinterpreted and reimagined by each new generation.

Explore period-instrument performances of Handel's most famous oratorio in venues up and down the UK this holiday season – all listed on Continuo Connect.