The Mankato Symphony Orchestra will present Handel’s “Messiah” twice in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
MSO first presented the traditional piece in 1950, its first year as an organization.
Performances are 7 p.m. Saturday at St. Peter High School and 4 p.m. Sunday at Grace Lutheran Church in Fairmont.
In addition to this tradition, MSO will for the first time offer a Hometown Holiday Market, featuring handmade crafts by Southern Minnesota’s Misfit Crafters, beginning at 6 p.m., an hour before the St. Peter concert.
A full production of Handel’s “Messiah” includes the MSO with a hand-picked community chorus and Minnesota star soloists Linh Kauffman (soprano), Victoria Vargas (mezzo soprano), Gary Ruschman (tenor) and Philip Zawisza (bass). It will be led by MSO’s music director, Ernesto Estigarribia.
Last week at VINE Adult Community Center and the North Mankato Taylor Library, MSO Free Family Series Artistic Director August Jeske gave a history of “Messiah,” interspersed with performances by a stringed quartet. Among the pieces played was the “Halleluiah Chorus,” one of the best-known selections from “Messiah.”
“We joke that we do musical charcuterie here,” he said at VINE. “Little tastes of things that make you hungry for something larger.” From the number of hands that went up when he asked about having attended a symphony concert, his audience is familiar with the MSO menu.
Beginning with the title, “Messiah,” he said, “It is an Anglicization of an ancient Hebrew word, ‘Mushiya,’ which means ‘deliver,’ which can be translated as ‘a redeemer’ or ‘a savior.’ It’s one of those things that’s part of our cultural lexicon, even if we aren’t necessarily familiar with its origin or its significance.”
Composed in 1741 and first performed in Dublin in 1742, “Messiah” is one of Handel’s English oratorios that he began writing in 1730s in response to changes in public taste. He had written Italian operas, which explains its resemblance to opera, according to Wikipedia.
Jeske noted that over Handel’s life, he composed more than 100 Italian operas, but they were not fully accessible to ordinary folks. This operatic experience, composing about generally religious topics, set Handel and a friend up to “bash out” “Messiah” in just one and a half months in 1741.
When introducing the playing of the overture, Jeske said, “Compare this to other sacred music that you might have heard or what you think church music might have been from this period of history.” Music from “Messiah” is filled with “dynamism and animation and just sheer theatricality,” elements that packed the house for even the earliest performances.
The text was compiled from the King James Bible and Coverdale Psalter (book of common prayer) by Charles Jennens. After his death, according to Wikipedia, the trend was to adapt it for much larger-scale performances, but since the late 20th century the tendency has been to return to its original “modest vocal and instrumental forces” scale.
“Handel never explicitly said whether or not he felt that he had had divine support in composing the ‘Messiah’ as a whole. But he did say in his letters that for the ‘Halleluiah Chorus,’ when he came to the point of having to score that, in his words, he said ‘the heavens opened before my eyes and the music poured forth,’” Jeske said.
For the two holiday concerts, the Mankato Symphony Orchestra will “pour forth” the entire 90-minute “Messiah,” allowing listeners to judge for themselves its origins.