First its great domes and pillars and mighty arches
were prettily ornamented and tinted by Mozart, who surely knew not
what he did; then in England a barbarous traditional method of singing
it was evolved; later it was Costa-mongered; finally even the late
eminent Macfarren, the worst enemy music has ever had in this
country, did not disdain to prepare "a performing edition," and to
improve Mozart's improvements on Handel. One wonders whether Mozart,
when he overlaid the "Messiah" with his gay tinsel-work, dreamed that
some Costa, encouraged by Mozart's own example, and without brains
enough to guess that he had nothing like Mozart's brains, would in
like manner desecrate "Don Giovanni." Like "Don Giovanni," there the
"Messiah" lies, almost unrecognisable under its outrageous adornments,
misunderstood, its splendours largely unknown and hardly even
suspected, the best known and the least known of oratorios, a work
spoken of as fine by those who cannot hum one of its greatest themes
or in the least comprehend the plan on which its noblest choruses are
constructed.
Rightly to approach the "Messiah" or any of Handel's sacred oratorios,
to approach it in any sure hope of appreciating it, one must remember
that (as I have just said) Handel had nothing of the religious
temperament, that in temperament he was wholly secular, that he was an
eighteenth century pagan.
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