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Hallelujah for Handel’s “Messiah”, December 18, 2025

Posted by: Mark Hartsell

The Christmas season is filled with cherished traditions, and one of them is George Frideric Handel.

Few works in Western classical music achieved the enduring popularity of Handel’s 18th-century oratorio “Messiah” — the thrilling power of its “Hallelujah” chorus has given audiences goosebumps for 283 years and counting.

 And unlike many works or composers, “Messiah” never went out of fashion, never needed to be “rediscovered.”

Handel’s masterwork, which chronicles the prophecy, birth, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, originally was most associated with Easter. Over time, especially in the U.S., it became a Christmas tradition, performed in big city concert halls, college auditoriums and small-town churches just down the road. The “Messiah” singalong is a ’tis-the-season programming staple for major performing arts centers and community chorales alike.

The Music Division collections hold testaments to that tradition’s roots: a variety of 18th-century printings of selections from the work as well as complete scores.

Handel debuted “Messiah” in Dublin in April 1742. The first complete score, however, wasn’t published until 25 years later — eight years after Handel’s death. The Music Division’s earliest complete orchestral score is bound in sumptuous red leather, brilliantly gilded. The letters “IHS” — a Christogram for the Latin Iesus Hominum Salvator, or Jesus, Savior of Mankind — lie within a circle of angels and stars.

The frontispiece presents an elaborate portrait of the regally dressed composer, followed two pages later by a list of subscribers who would be buying this, his latest work — starting with King George III and Queen Charlotte and the Dukes of York, Gloucester and Cumberland. Also on the list: Charles Jennens, the wealthy arts patron who compiled the “Messiah” libretto (he got three copies).

Inside, from the first words of “Comfort Ye” to the final “Amen,” Handel delivers high drama, memorable arias and stirring choruses that peak over and over again and bring back audiences again and again — as they have now for nearly three centuries.

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