ArtsITV takes a wonderfully fresh approach to celebrate Easter and Handel’s great oratorio Messiah, as The South Bank Show follows three Yorkshire choirs and their connection with this treasured work.
250 years after Handel’s death, The South Bank Show finds out what it means to sing this most popular of oratorios from members of the mighty Huddersfield Choral Society, the smaller Keighley Vocal Union, and the intimate gay and lesbian choir, The Sacred Wing from Leeds. The film captures each of the choirs’ tradition, their passion, their history, their personal stories, their scores handed down from generation to generation, their local landscape - and their preparations in the run up to the day of each of their performances.
This unique South Bank Show demonstrates how Handel’s masterpiece carries significance for all, religious or otherwise, and that it can be sung anywhere and by anyone. The choirs are as much about friendship and companionship, young and old, as they are about the soaring music of Messiah.
Messiah is that rare piece of classical music that is instantly recognisable and has the extraordinary power in bringing groups of people together (amateur and professional) and has made it the sacred cow of all choral music to the extent that Christmas and Easter celebrations are incomplete without it.
Messiah was something of a departure for Handel. He was best known for his Italian operas but sensing a change in London’s musical tastes he responded with an oratorio based on English texts taken from the bible. He completed it in less than three weeks in 1741. It had its premier in Dublin a year later, but it was only when Handel presented Messiah at benefit concerts for the Foundling Hospital, a charity for abandoned children, that audiences started to fall for its charms. This noble gesture (a kind of early day Band Aid) ensured many repeated performances, so laying the seeds for its enduring appeal.
In time choirs would take it up, first in the big cathedrals and then, in the 19th century, by amateur choral societies springing up across industrial Britain.
This tradition continues to this day and is arguably at its strongest in Yorkshire where Handel would be delighted to see how loved his Messiah has become in this South Bank Show.
Last edited: Friday, 27 March 2009
