George Frideric Handel Messiah: Excerpts from Part I

[elleng]

https://weta.org/player

[Jilly_in_VA]

1. I think my favorite version

Is the one with Voces 8 and the Academy of Ancient Music. It's intimate and probably the way Handel would have like it, but at the same time it's not pretentious.

&pp=ygUHTWVzc2lhaA%3D%3D

[elleng]

2. NICE!!!

[Ocelot II]

3. It's a lovely performance. Handel's original performances

usually involved small choruses, maybe 4-7 on a part. A few decades after his death, though, the British, then the Germans and Italians, started demanding a bigger sound, and 19th-century performances were massive. German immigrants to the US already had huge choral societies, so the tradition came to be that choruses involving hundreds of people were expected in the US as well. And I imagine these performances were just mush, like those of the always-horrible Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

[Jilly_in_VA]

4. Messiah "sing-ins" are one thing

and they're a lot of fun. You get a hundred or so amateurs, many who love the thing and (often) have their own dog-eared and marked up scores, some newbies who've always wanted to sing it, and trained soloists from local choirs, and that's just for fun. But I agree with you about the "big" performances. They're awful.

[mwf]

5. Wonderful

Just saw a performance last night in Columbia, Missouri. Also well done.