Brush up your Handel

Back in the studio, Aled Jones spoke with Handel expert Laurence Cummings on the enduring appeal of his music. Why, asked Aled, has the ‘Hallelujah’ become, since its first performance in Dublin in 1742, the best known of all communal choruses? There’s something about Handel’s music, and especially his choral music, ‘which speaks to the human in us all’, says Cummings. It’s the synchronicity, he explained, the merging of all those different voices into a harmonious whole. The singers, as one, take in a breath and then watching closely for the beat give out, as one, that gloriously affirming repetition, ‘Hal-le-lu-jah! Hal-le-lu-jah!’ It’s a moment of pure and joyous harmony, which should cheer even the gloomiest of souls.

Radio Three has also been celebrating the 350th anniversary of the birth in 1659 of Henry Purcell, arguably the greatest of English composers, who was organist and choirmaster at Westminster Abbey until his premature death, aged just 36. On his tomb in the north quire aisle of the Abbey are inscribed the words, ‘great Purcell lives! His spirit haunts these aisles’. He was fortunate enough to be born just as Charles II was about to take the throne and to restore the pageantry and music associated with royal events and religious worship, giving him huge scope to develop the musical liturgy in English.

A palpable sense of his spirit resonated through the Abbey at the concert for St Cecilia’s Day, celebrated on 22 November, which was also broadcast on Radio Three. Purcell was the first English musician to celebrate the life of the early Christian martyr, who is remembered as the patron saint of music because of her courage in continuing to sing right up to the point of death at the hands of her executioner in Rome in 230 AD. The composer instituted an annual concert of new choral music, given in praise of music and in memory of her martyrdom; a tradition that was taken up in the early days of the Third Programme and has been continued ever since. As a child I can remember looking forward to the St Cecilia’s Day concert — Purcell, Handel and the Huddersfield Choral Society — as a potent promise that Advent was on its way.

On this particular night in the Abbey it was as if Purcell’s spirit was haunting the aisles as the choristers and soloists recreated the music that was sung at the funeral of Queen Mary in 1695; music that was heard again a few months later at Purcell’s own funeral, victim of a cold that rapidly turned fatal.