George Frideric Handel Messiah: Excerpts from Part I

[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.