(Handel)
Relayed from THE TOWNHALL, BIRMINGHAM
Performed by THE BIRMINGHAM FESTIVAL CHORAL SOCIETY
STILES-ALLEN (Soprano) DAISY NEAL (Contralto)
CHARLES HEDGES (Tenor)
KEITH FALKNER (Baritone)
THE CITY OF BIRMINGHAM ORCHESTRA
Conducted by ADRIAN BOULT
WHEN Handel set himself, in the autumn of 1741, at the age of fifty-six, to compose Messiah, he was under a cloud of misfortune and bitter disappointment which must have overwhelmed any. but the stoutest spirit. His last two operas had failed, largely, so wo are told, through the plots of his opponents. He was in anything but good health, his eyesight was beginning to fail him and he was almost penniless. He shut himself in his house in Brook Street, and, seeing no one, hardly stopping even to touch the food which his faithful man brought to his room, ho sot himself to the composition of Messiah with such wholehearted zeal that the work was completed in little more than three weeks. But ho had no prospect of an immediate performance of it, and it was simply laid aside for the time being. In November of the same year, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Devonshire, and the Presidents of three big charitable societies invited him to Dublin to organize concerts of his own music on behalf of the charities they had at heart. One was the provision of food for prisoners. It was at one of these concerts that Messiah had its first performance, in April, 1742.