In 1741, swimming in debt and out of favor as a composer, George Frideric Handel accepted a commission for a benefit concert in Dublin, Ireland. On August 22 the 56-year-old sequestered himself in his London home and began to compose music to biblical texts heralding the life of Jesus Christ. Just 23 days later he completed the 260-page oratorio. He titled this extraordinary outpouring of inspiration Messiah. Without question, this brilliant masterpiece has thrilled and inspired listeners from Handel’s time to our own.
But Handel’s work has done more than just please the ear. Its premier performance in Dublin on April 13, 1742, raised 400 pounds and freed 142 men from debtor’s prison. Before long, the charity sponsors began asking the ladies to refrain from wearing hoop skirts to performances in order to make room for more patrons and raise more money for the poor.
In the final few years of his life, Handel conducted charity concerts of Messiah for the London Foundling Hospital, a much-needed home for abandoned infants and children. The thousands raised for charity led one 18th-century biographer to state, “This great work has been heard in all parts of the kingdom with increasing reverence and delight; it has fed the hungry, clothed the naked, fostered the orphan.”1
This history of doing good for those in need continues to follow Handel’s Messiah. It is sung and enjoyed by more people today than ever before. But it’s not just the work’s musical quality that makes it a masterpiece. If its message inspires us to bear another’s grief or to carry another’s sorrow, then, long after the last hallelujahs, our hearts will resound with those immortal words “peace on earth, goodwill towards men” because we’ve done more than just sing them—we’ve put them into practice.
1 Charles Burney, An Account of the Musical Performances at Westminster-Abbey (1785; reprinted 1979), 27.
Program #4086