Handel’s Messiah, A Soulful Celebration: Reprise Records A music review and personal reflection
My Advent preparations have always been marked with multiple performances, sing-a-longs, and recordings of Handel’s Messiah. This great work has inspired me since my days at North Park College, and I continue to look to the music and text for vision and hope each season.
This year, however, has been a hard one. I do not mean hard like not having enough money to buy the gifts I really want or not being able to spend time with friends or family. It is something deeper than all that. I actually am coming into this 1992 Advent and Christmas season feeling discouraged, disconnected, empty, isolated, and angry. I have not been able to find comfort in any of my well-worn holiday tapes. I wonder to myself, “So what’s new”? I think-am not especially known for my light heartedness or fun loving spirit, anyway.
This year is different. I am more aware of all the pain and suffering that is around me. It seems closer than ever before, and it has also been more difficult to shut it all out. The list is long: Bosnia; Somalia; violence toward women and children; the destruction of rain forests, species of animals, and other natural resources; racial tension and intolerance; growing poverty and homelessness; the continued exploitation of Native American people.
At the women’s shelter where I work, I see problems growing in the families I serve. Women, wounded physically and mentally long ago through abuse and poverty, now continue
the cycle with their own children. I am constantly reminded of my own part in the conspiracy of silence and indifference that allows this kind of suffering to continue. In addition, I am faced with my own personal inadequacies and issues which I must confront so that I do not pass this legacy on to my own children.
Do you see what I mean? I would gladly “lighten up,” but I have not been able to figure out quite how to make that happen. Feeling stuck, I decided simply to get through the season as best as I could, and so began the search for gifts. During this search, David and I came across a recording of Handel’s Messiah. It looked interesting, so we took it home with the hope that it would not be just another disappointment. It did not take long to realize that this tape was something special.
To begin with, the overture caught me completely off guard. It is a lively, condensed history of black music, featuring a collage of big band jazz, gospel, blues, hip-hop, spiritual, and ragtime sounds-all of which felt too good to be “religious.” The notes and the words were familiar, but they rang out with an entirely new twist — leaping over my cynical wall with new belief that no evil would stand when this refiner’s fire did its job.
This imaginative and masterful arrangement of rhythms, notes, and words takes this beloved music out of the concert hall — where polite applause at the end of the performance is the imposed limit of my own joyful response — and brings it out into the streets. Here I can bring all my pain and sadness forth to be redeemed in the music, even as others have done for generations. I can lift my hands, heart, and feet and dance for joy! I can celebrate with Soweto, the Mississippi Delta, Jamaica, New Orleans, South L.A., and tribal Africa.
The music may seem like an irreverent assault on a holy icon, but it has allowed me, and perhaps others, to celebrate from our personal journey this Advent season. The notes and the text created and used by George (Handel) are all there. Even the Baroque complexity and energy of the fugue. But, just imagine all this with sax and tamborine.
The result is a loud, harsh, driving, brash yet comforting and hopeful work of art for our time. The message is urgent and uncompromising. This Soulful Celebration is not for the timid or complacent. But who has that luxury in the world of 1993?