Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
The musical entrepreneurship behind the ‘Hallelujah’ Chorus
The musical entrepreneurship behind the ‘Hallelujah’ Chorus
Mar 18, 2025 7:02 PM

Although it was intended to be an position, the “Hallelujah” Chorus from Handel’s Messiah has e the musical diadem of the Christmas season. It has already in early January vanished from the radio, because the modern West pre-celebrates all its holidays. (The Christmas season traditionally spans the “12 days of Christmas,” from December 25 until the feast of Epiphany on January 6.) However, it never would have graced the most joyous season of the year without the entrepreneurial spirit of poser.

Among the many reasons behind his position was a desire to earn enough money to pay pursuing creditors.

George Frideric Handel was born into a poor but devout Lutheran family in Halle, Germany, in 1685. His father, Georg, wanted his son to study law and forbade him from pursuing his passion for music. According to some biographies, the younger Handel smuggled a small clavier into the attic and taught himself to play, practicing so quietly that he did not disturb his sleeping parents.

At age seven, he panied his father to Weißenfels’ Trinity Chapel, and began playing its organ. The duke insisted that the prodigy develop his musical gifts, and Handel began playing in Halle Cathedral. From there, Handel would embark on an extraordinary journey – from Italy, to the court of Hanover, to London, to musical immortality.

Handel became “the first truly poser,” wrote biographer Christopher Hogwood, “with a staunch independence that prevented him from ever accepting the position of employee and a pragmatic approach position that enabled him to excel in every chosen field, sacred or secular.”

However, his mastery of the opera cut deeply into his profits. Operas required that he rent the performance venue, hire (often highly temperamental and foreign) singers, and construct lavish sets and wardrobes. As the public’s taste for opera began to wane, his livelihood began to dry up. Soon, Handel stood in danger of ending up in a debtors’ prison.

Two decisions would change his life, and sacred music, forever. First, Handel adapted to the changing marketplace by jettisoning costly operas and began writing oratorios – positions that were typically performed in the vernacular language without elaborate costumes or backdrops.

“With oratorios, Handel could be more his own master,” wrote biographer Jonathan Keates inHandel: The Man and his Music.

Second, an old friend named Charles Jennens approached poser with a libretto – the words, which Jennens described as “a meditation of our Lord as Messiah in Christian thought and belief.” Some say he intended the scriptural lyrics bat the heresy of Deism. Jennens prevailed upon Handel to write the music, writing, “I hope [Handel] will lay out his whole Genius & Skill upon it, that the Composition may excel all his former Compositions, as the Subject excels every other Subject.”

Handel worked posing the 259-page score in just 24 days. He would not leave his room for days at a time and, legend has it, he often left his meals uneaten.

Handel also reportedly told his servant that, posing the Messiah, he’d had a mystical vision. “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God Himself seated on His throne, with pany of angels,” he said.

At the end of the manuscript, Handel wrote the initials “SDG,” which stands for “Soli Deo Gloria” – one of the “five solas” of the Protestant Reformation meaning, “To God alone be the glory.”

However, it was not smooth sailing. Church authorities denounced Handel for arranging such inspirational texts, because sacred oratorios were staged in theaters, where the next performance may feature bawdy material. Rather than seeing his work as taking the Gospel to the lost sheep, eighteenth-century Christians believed the venue somehow tainted the work – that the infirmity infected the medicine.

Handel’s Messiah debuted in Dublin’s Musick Hall on April 13, 1742, and came to London a year later. The Messiah became recognized as an unsurpassed work of musical and scriptural value. Even critics expressed their criticism in ethereal terms. Horace Walpole, the politician and son of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, wrote that some of the singers’ limited vocal ranges “give me an idea of heaven, where everybody is to sing whether they have voices or not.”

However, Handel truly established his work in the public imagination when he performed a charitable benefit inside the chapel of Foundling Hospital, an orphanage. One of its governors, William Hogarth, decided to set the new philanthropy apart by donating one of his own paintings to keep on display. He convinced other artists to follow his lead and, soon, Foundling Hospital became something of a public museum.

Handel began giving annual performances there – first of his “Hallelujah” Chorus in 1749, then the full Messiah every year until his death. He personally conducted a performance while wracked with pain, just weeks before he passed away on Holy Saturday, April 14, 1759.

“The creative philanthropy of Hogarth, Handel and their contemporaries was remarkable, but their support was not without professional self-interest,” reported the UK Guardian (which seldom misses an opportunity to note professional self-interest). “The two artists were pioneers in their respective fields and they needed platforms on which to promote their work.” Minnesota Public Radio explained the situation in starker terms yet, stating that Handel wrote the Messiah for three reasons:

(1) For the glory of God,

(2) for the benefit of charity (profits from the first performance were used to support a hospital and an infirmary in Dublin; and to release 142 people from debtors’ prison), and, of course,

(3) for the benefit of George Frederic Handel (profits from the second performance went straight to poser).

Messiah again made Handel a wealthy man. He prudently invested his earnings in the stock market, where his wealth grew beyond his wildest dreams. His estate totaled £20,000 (more than $1 million U.S. today.)

His wealth allowed him to e a notable philanthropist. Handel freely distributed his goods to orphans – the Foundling Hospital, which had been so good to him, became a favorite charity – as well as the aged and infirm. He also donated to a debtors’ prison in Dublin, where he very well may have ended up.

Handel knew his genius, or parative advantage” – the God-given talent that would e his vocation – at an early age. He pursued it despite all obstacles and excelled through hard work and study. He maintained independence – in those days, most patrons were government officials – by frequently changing patrons, demonstrating a willingness to move across seas using eighteenth-century modes of travel. He creatively adapted to his consumers’ demands, and reduced his overhead, by changing his musical style. He profited handsomely from his work – and his investments in the stock market (which some denounce as “speculation” or even “gambling”) – and donated the proceeds to those most in need, as manded in Matthew 25.

Handel’s immortal, position – catalyzed by fears of a Dickensian future in the poorhouse – has e the soundtrack of the holiday season. Messiah is a testimony that entrepreneurship, mixed with charity, can ennoble the mind, enrich the culture, and feed the soul.

Frideric Handel, by Thomas Hudson. National Portrait Gallery. Public domain.)

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Unemployment as economic-spiritual indicator — March 2018 report
Series Note: Jobs are one of the most important aspects of a morally functioning economy. They help us serve the needs of our neighbors and lead to human flourishing both for the individual and munities. Conversely, not having a job can adversely affect spiritual and psychological well-being of individuals and families. Because unemployment is a spiritual problem, Christians in America need to understand and be aware of the monthly data on employment. Each month highlight the latest numbers we need...
Remember the intangibles: A caution to the 21st-century economist
Today’s economists have no shortage of confidence, offering models and measurements aplenty. But are the tools of the field keeping pace with the actual forces and factors at work? bination of economics with statistics in plex world promises a lot more than it delivers,” economist Russ Roberts recently wrote. “We economists should be more humble and honest about the reliability and precision of statistical analysis.” Indeed, in our plex economy, what can economists actually know? In a new essay at...
How growth rates affect the wealth of nations
Note: This is post #74 in a weekly video series on basic economics. In the previous video in this series we learned a basic fact of economic wealth—that countries can vary widely in standard of living. How can we explain wealth disparities between countries? The answer, as Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution university explains, is growth rates. Tabarrok examines the growth rate of the U.S. economy and considers what would life be like if our economy had grown at an...
Video: Dispelling myths about economic inequality
The lure of socialism lies in its promise of “equality,” a hazily defined concept that educational and political leaders transform into an even more ambiguous social goal. The word itself triggers the innate sense of fairness and equity cherished by everyone raised under the influence of Western culture. The Bible, after all, repeatedly warns believers to have no respect of persons when meting out justice, which Aquinas ranked as “foremost among all the moral virtues.” But do modern-day social engineers...
Radio Free Acton: Discussion on Communism in Cuba; Tech & work part II: Growing technology in agriculture
On this episode of Radio Free Acton, Acton’s director of programs and education, Paul Bonicelli, talks to John Suarez, research director at the Center for a Free Cuba. This talk is a preview of an ing event at Acton on April 17: Communism in Cuba, its international impact, the democratic resistance and U.S. Cuba policy. Then, on the next Tech and the Future of Work segment, Dan Churchwell, Acton’s associate director of program outreach, speaks with Kevin Scott, a soybean...
Cronyism fueled the murder of a Slovak journalist
“Slovakia has been living through one of the most turbulent times in its young history,” says Martina Bobulová in this week’s Acton Commentary. “It has been almost a month since the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová, which have put these events in motion.” Much has changed in past four weeks – the nation went to the streets and the country experienced the biggest public protests since the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Robert Fico’s third...
Is there a connection between opioid use and unemployment?
For the past several years the U.S. has been undergoing an opioid epidemic. Opioidsare drugs, whether illegal or prescription, that reduce the intensity of pain signals reaching the brain and affect those brain areas controlling emotion, which diminishes the effects of a painful stimulus. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in 2013 there were more than249 million prescriptionsfor opioid pain medication written by healthcare providers. This is enough for every adult in America to have a bottle of...
The Social Capital Index: A geography of ‘associational life’ in America
In recent decades, America has experienced a wave of economic and social disruption. In our search for solutions, however, we tend to look only at the surface, assessing the architecture of particular policies or stroking our chins over economic measurements like Gross Domestic Product. But what if we had a deeper view of the dynamics beneath the surface? What if we had way to measure, assess, and observe the state of“associational life”in America (as Alexis de Tocqueville may have called...
Virtues, once again
“Crisis of Responsibility: Our Cultural Addiction to Blame and How You Can Cure It,” by David L. Bahnsen; Foreward by David French; PostHill Press, 2018; 170 pp.; $26. It’s been a long, hard slog on humanity’s path to the current century and its peculiar predicaments. Along the way, there have been numerous guidebooks to assist our respective generations’ quests for living honorable lives in the face of varyingly difficult circumstances. To list them, in fact, would create a magnificent bibliography...
Fifty years later, cities still suffer the economic effects of the 1968 riots
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the riots that began in 1968 after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The riots—sometimes referred to as the Holy Week Uprising or King assassination riots—spread through 110 cities across the United States. As historian Peter B. Levy notes, Fifty-four cities suffered at least $100,000 in property damage, with the nation’s capital and Baltimore topping the list at approximately $15 million and $12 million, respectively. Thousands of small shopkeepers saw their...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved