Handel’s Messiah Got Me Through Covid

Hey everybody! Welcome to the third day of December's blog week. If you haven't already read the blogs for Monday and Tuesday, I recommend that you read them. And if you have, then you already know that this month's blogs have the theme of Christmas in them! On Monday I shared a Christmas story that happened in my first semester of college, 2018. On Tuesday I posted a blog on a Christmas experience in 2019(mostly). Today's blog is going to be a Christmas experience I had in 2020.

I was taking Music History 1 that Fall semester, and I was required to write an essay on a musical event that took place during the eras that we were studying. I decided to write about the Oratorio that Handle wrote called, The Messiah. 

I chose to focus on this piece because it's been a part of my life ever since I was a little child. I went from watching my dad and brothers leave home late in the evening to perform in it, to being old enough to watch and listen to the performance myself without falling asleep. I went from listening to the performance and hearing my dad’s Tenor voice stand out, to choosing to be in the choir myself. I soon started auditioning for solo parts. I had the opportunity to sing the Recitative for Soprano, And Suddenly There was with the Angel and the Air for Soprano, How Beautiful are the Feet of Them. So in 2020, I was so excited that I had the opportunity to write a research paper on this beautiful Oratorio. 

At the beginning of November that year, I had gotten Covid and was confined to my room for a whole month. My mom would leave me food at my door and there was a bathroom next to my room, but the only opportunities to see people was in my online classes. It was just me, myself, and I, stuck alone in a room.

It was really depressing at first. It didn't help that I was coughing hard and had a headache, I had to be quarantined from everyone including my family. But whenever I sat down to work on my essay about The Messiah, I felt so much comfort and peace. I would listen to the songs as I wrote the essay and make notes on the songs.

Word painting had a huge part in the beauty of this oratorio. In solos such as Every Valley Shall Be Exalted and Thus Saith The Lord, the notes that move up and down depict the movement of the earth being moved. The Bass singer would sing higher on the word "exalted" in Every Valley, and in the song Thus Saith the Lord the singer goes back and forth between notes when singing the word "shake". In But Who May Abide the Day of His Coming, the voice moves up and down when singing about the refiner's fire, as if depicting an actual fire. As the choir sings, Are We Like Sheep, the eighth notes bounce up and down as if each singer was a sheep going off by itself to explore the mountains. There's so many songs, both powerful and peaceful, that the choir sings as if they are angels from heaven praising and testifying of Christ, The Messiah.

As I listened to these beautiful songs, I researched the background of the Oratorio and found out about how Handel ended up writing it. Handel, of course, was the composer of the music. The lyrics were words of the Prophets from The Bible. These are the things that are the most obvious to people that know the words and the author of this great piece. However, the reason that writing The Messiah even happened was because of Charles Jennens, a good friend of Handel who wrote operas with him. Jennens would put together lyrics, usually words found in the Bible, and Handel wrote the music to go with them. Jennens believed that Christianity was the only true religion, and that through Christ resurrection was possible. He also believed in the power of music and that, with the help of Handel, he could share his religious beliefs through that power.

Reminiscing my own experiences of singing the songs in this oratorio, listening to the songs on YouTube, and learning about the backstory of how it ended up being written was really therapeutic for me as I sat in my room coughing. It was almost Christmas and it was wonderful to have some Christmas music to listen to since I couldn't sing myself. But what about you? Have you ever listened to The Messiah, and if so what do you think about it? Let me know your thoughts down below! Also make sure you check out my YouTube videos, consider buying the sheet music of my original songs, and/or donate to my website! I hope you're enjoying the holidays.

Thanks for reading to the end.