The audience embraced the highest personages in the realm, from the King downwards, and as the performance progressed, so did the excitement, which culminated during the singing
of the "Hallelujah" chorus, by the people, headed by the King, springing to their feet and remaining standing until the end.
The "Messiah" may be said to have crowned the work that the earlier oratorios had begun. Henceforth the English people were to see, as their ancestors had before them, that music was not only great as an art, but that it could be both an aid and inspiration to religion.
It is little to be wondered at, that a people who must have been thirsting for music so long, should give vent to outbursts of emotion and enthusiasm, when it was restored to them in the form of so sublime a conception.
What an experience! to have been among those on whose ears fell for the first time those wonderfully touching and simple recitatives, in which the vision of the shepherds is described and the announcement of the birth of the Saviour made, or the more poignant one in which, to music of intense emotional power, the terrible story of the Last Agonies is related.
No other work has ever approached the "Messiah" in the strength of its hold on the mind and imagination of the English people, and this is as true to-day as it was a hundred and fifty years ago. They know it incomparably better than any other music ever written, and the many beautiful numbers it contains, may be said to be as familiar in their mouths as household words. The "Hallelujah" chorus, although not by any means Handel's best, still retains its old popularity, and, indeed, nearly
the whole work would seem to be endowed with endless life.
There are certain numbers, it is true, of which this cannot be said, and which are usually omitted, but, seeing the extraordinary rapidity with which it was written, the amazing thing is that they are so few. It seems absolutely incredible that this, his greatest oratorio, should have been written within the short space of three weeks, yet it was so.
I have written at some length on Handel and the "Messiah," as it is his unique distinction, through the medium of this immortal work, to have revolutionised the spirit of the English people, and helped to rid it of the Calvinistic thraldom that had enveloped it.
I must now content myself with a brief commentary on the successive oratorios, since Handel's day, that have had any distinct and abiding influence on music in England.