How Handel Composed Messiah

When he wrote Messiah (in 24 days), Handel was past his prime and nearly broke. One night in Dublin changed all that. (Part two of “Making Messiah.”)

• SOURCES:
  • Charles King, political scientist at Georgetown University.
  • Chris Scobie, curator of music, manuscripts, and archives at the British Library.
  • Ellen Harris, musicologist and professor emeritus at MIT.
  • Mark Risinger, teacher at St. Bernard's School.
  • Philip Rushforth, organist and master of the choristers at the Chester Cathedral.
  • Proinnsías Ó Duinn, conductor and music director of Our Lady's Choral Society.

• RESOURCES:
  • Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel's Messiah, by Charles King (2024).
  • "Arnaud du Sarrat and the international music trade in Halle and Leipzig c.1700," by Tomasz Górny (Early Music, 2023).
  • George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends, by Ellen Harris (2014).
  • Handel (Composers Across Cultures), by Donald Burrows (2012).
  • "Georg Händel (1622–97): The Barber-Surgeon Father of George Frideric Handel (1685–1759)," by Aileen Adams and B. Hofestädt (Journal Of Medical Biography, 2005).
  • Handel's Messiah: A Celebration: A Richly Illustrated History of the Music and Its Eighteenth-Century Background, by Richard Luckett (1995).
  • Handel's Messiah The Advent Calendar, podcast series.

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