Music director Francesco-Lecce Chong conducts the Baroque monument of an oratorio from the keyboard.
by Tom Strini
Author's preamble: "Better never than late" is an all-too-true truism in the news business. And friends, am I ever late. With end-of-term teaching crises, I clean forgot to post this story by way of advancing this program. Still, an interesting story; Francesco is always a fascinating interview. Even post-facto. Also, the performance was a smashing success.
Messiah, HWV 56 [1742]
Libretto by Charles Jennens
In December of 2013, Christopher Seaman led the Milwaukee Symphony Chorus and Orchestra in the annual performances of Handel’s Messiah. Francesco Lecce-Chong, then the MSO’s assistant conductor was there.
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| G.F. Handel, portrait by Thomas Hudson |
“Everything I know about Messiah, the germ of all of this, was there,” Lecce-Chong said, in a recent interview.
Seaman conducted from the harpsichord, as Handel would have in Dublin at the first performance, April 13, 1742, and as Lecce-Chong will Dec. 7, 2017, with the Eugene Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.
Lecce-Chong did not let it go at that. When he determined to lead a Seaman-style Messiah in Eugene, he arranged to spend a day with the London-based conductor when he was in America. They met in Rochester, N.Y., in 2015. For eight hours, they worked through the score together. Lecce-Chong left that session with a deeper understanding of the music and how to present it.
“It’s been a year-long process,” Lecce-Chong said. He referred not only to learning the harpsichord part well enough to be comfortable both playing and conducting, but also to incorporating Seaman’s judicious edits of the score and thinking of how to achieve Seaman’s level of focus, clarity, transparency, and drama.
Part of it involves conducting and rehearsal technique. Part of it is conceptual and philosophical.
“We had a long talk about embodying the essences of the three parts of the oratorio and the role of the chorus,” Lecce-Chong said. “In Part 1, they’re angels. In Part 2, God comes down to earth, and they’re humans – it’s the chorus as us. In Part 3, they’re the souls in Paradise.”
Sharon Paul, director of the Eugene Symphony Chorus (and Director of Choral Activities at the University of Oregon), must prepare her 100 or so singers to play those roles. And, of course, hit those thousands of notes.
“The piece is harder than it looks,” she said, in a separate interview. “I like clean articulation, and it’s really hard for 100 people to sing those fast 16th-notes with the precision they require.”
Like Lecce-Chong, Paul won’t take anything for granted or rely on routine in her approach to this very familiar seasonal piece.
“In general, people are always happy to sing it, even if they’ve sung it a million times,” she said. “But I always try to dig deeper into the score, to get at the Baroque rhetoric in the musical gestures.”
She cited, as an example, “We like sheep,” the ditzy gambol that takes the treble voices astray in all directions. They aren’t just notes. They paint a picture.
Another part of preparing the chorus is setting them up for success when Lecce-Chong takes over during the final rehearsals and performance.
“I enjoy collaboration,” she said. “I enjoy preparing for someone else, and then watching the music evolve. In rehearsal, I give the them different ways to sing the same passage. The singers have to be flexible.”
The audience might have to be a little flexible, too. You know that tradition, in which everyone stands for the “Hallelujah” chorus? Lecce-Chong invites you to stay seated. He has his reasons.
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| Francesco Lecce-Chong |
“Hallelujah,” the most famous choral number in Western music, closes Part 2 of the oratorio. But it’s only Part 2, the earthly, human part, with the Passion, crucifixion and conflicted human feelings around those events. We haven’t arrived in Paradise. In Lecce-Chong’s view, making too much commotion at “Hallelujah” time – which, remember, has to do with Easter and the Resurrection, not with Christmas and the Nativity -- breaks the momentum and sends the wrong message.
“That’s what I love about Part 2,” Lecce-Chong said. “The people constantly change their minds about Christ. The oratorio can’t end there. If the audience stands, ‘Hallelujah’ takes on a different meaning. It’s too final.”
Standing during that number, the 44th of 53 in the complete score (and the 39th of 47 in this performance), is traditional but not authentic. Critic Michael Guerrieri, in a very entertaining Boston Globe piece from 2009, surveyed the many theories behind that tradition. The most often cited is that King George II, at the London premiere in 1743, stood for the chorus. When the king stood, everyone stood, and it became customary. But according to Guerrieri, the only evidence favoring that theory comes from someone claiming, 37 years later, to have been present for the occurrence. Otherwise, there is no record of the king even attending the London premiere.
In 1750, a reliable source noted that some of the swells in attendance stood not only for “Hallelujah,” but for other choruses, as well. But Londoners apparently were inclined to rise up more generally at concerts when choruses were involved, especially at performances of Handel’s other oratorios. (Messiah was his sixth.)
Despite Handel’s objections, much of his audience and many still today assume the work to be liturgical. When the London premiere of Messiah was announced at Covent Garden (one of the most famous concert venues in the city), a scathing op-ed in one of the major papers denounced the excitement: “An Oratorio either is an Act of Religion, or it is not. If it is one I ask if the Playhouse is a fit Temple to perform it, or a Company of Players fit Ministers of God’s Word.’’
To understand how Handel conceived of his Messiah as a musical drama intended for concert performance, let’s back up a bit in music history.
Handel settled in England in 1712, on the heels of the great European success of his opera, Rinaldo, composed during an extended stay in Italy. Italian opera, sung in Italian by Italians, was all the rage throughout Europe. But it was slow to gain a footing in England. Nonsensical English translations, English singers with no feel for Italian style, and, worse, mixed Italian-English casts singing in two languages made the medium look and sound silly.
Handel cannily saw opportunity in England for someone who could do Italian opera right. He imported singers, established a company, and made a great deal of money composing and producing Italian-language opera in London.
By the 1730s, that business sagged. Competition from John Gay’s English-vernacular The Beggar’s Opera, a smash hit in 1728, made Handel’s companies look effete and foreign. Gay and a raft of imitators put on rough-and-tumble shows in English and reset popular songs of the day. The Beggar’s Opera openly satirized the upper classes and the Italian opera they adored. Handel continued to stage opera in London until 1741, but knew that he needed another mode.
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| A massive performance of Messiah at the Crystal Palace, London, 1857 |
He turned to English-language oratorio, which answered all the criticisms about the decadence of Italian opera and was high-minded enough to distinguish the genre from The Beggar’s Opera and its successors. Oratorios could be put on in theaters or in churches at lower expense than full-blown opera. But the music was the key: Handel retained the musical conventions of Italian opera, and, more importantly, the dramatic, evocative music of his earlier operas.
Lecce-Chong spoke to Messiah’s universal appeal:
“The popularity of Messiah among people of all backgrounds and ages from around the world speaks to Handel’s ability to portray the human condition. Handel had a strong sense of empathy for those around him as he consistently donated proceeds from his performances to charities throughout his life. In Messiah, Handel takes the universally known life of Jesus and brings out the human element in the story. We feel the joy, love, pain, anger, and confusion of the people – it’s no wonder that the work inspires both Christians and non-Christians alike! In asking people to remain seated for the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus, I am inviting us all to be captivated by this work, as its very first audiences and were gripped by the drama that unfolds on stage.”
Historical Sources: Matthew Guerrieri, “Taking a Stand,” Boston Globe, Dec. 19, 2009; University of Michigan Student Projects, Beggar’s Opera; Seen and Heard International, Interview with Christoper Seaman, Dec. 7, 2016; Wikipedia pages on Handel and Messiah; Eighteenth Century Reception of Italian Opera in London, by Kaylyn Kinder, master’s thesis, University of Louisville, 2013.
What: Cirque de la Symphonie Holiday Spectacular
Who: Conductor Anthony Parnther and Cirque aerialists, acrobats.
Rep: Holiday Themes
When: 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 17
Where: Hult Center Silva Concert Hall, Willamette Street at 7th Avenue
Tickets: 541-682-5000, box office; and online.
Who: Conductor Anthony Parnther and Cirque aerialists, acrobats.
Rep: Holiday Themes
When: 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 17
Where: Hult Center Silva Concert Hall, Willamette Street at 7th Avenue
Tickets: 541-682-5000, box office; and online.
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