657. Whose “Messiah” Is It Anyway?

657. Whose “Messiah” Is It Anyway?

All sorts of people have put their mark on Messiah, and it has been a hit for nearly 300 years. How can a single piece of music thrive in so many settings? You could say it’s because Handel really knew how to write a banger. (Part three of “Making Messiah.”)

• SOURCES:
  • Charles King, political scientist at Georgetown University.
  • Jane Glover, classical music scholar, conductor.
  • Katharine Hogg, musicologist, head librarian at the Foundling Museum.
  • Susannah Heschel, religion professor, chair of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College.
  • Mark Risinger, teacher at St. Bernard’s School.
  • Michael Marissen, professor emeritus of music at Swarthmore College, author of Tainted Glory in Handel’s Messiah: The Unsettling History of the World’s Most Beloved Choral Work.

• RESOURCES:
  • Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah, by Charles King (2024).
  • “Why These Christmas Songs Could Only Be Written in America,” by Eli Lake (The Free Press, 2024).
  • “Reflections on Bernstein’s 1956 “Messiah,”” by Mark Risinger (Leonard Bernstein Office, 2022).
  • Handel in London: The Making of a Genius, by Jane Glover (2018).
  • Tainted Glory in Handel’s Messiah: The Unsettling History of the World’s Most Beloved Choral Work, by Michael Marissen (2014).
  • “Handel’s Messiah,” performed by The London Symphony Orchestra (2007).

• EXTRAS:
  • “Making Messiah,” series by Freakonomics Radio (2025).

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