Unsettling History of That Joyous ‘Hallelujah’ (NYT vomit alert)

New York Times ^ | 4/8/07 | Michael Marissen

[lqclamar]

IN New York and elsewhere a “Messiah Sing-In” — a performance of Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” with the audience joining in the choruses — is a musical highlight of the Christmas season. Christians, Jews and others come together to delight in one of the consummate masterpieces of Western music.

The high point, inevitably, is the “Hallelujah” chorus, all too familiar from its use in strange surroundings, from Mel Brooks’s “History of the World, Part 1,” where it signified the origins of music among cavemen, to television advertising for behemoth all-terrain vehicles.

So “Messiah” lovers may be surprised to learn that the work was meant not for Christmas but for Lent, and that the “Hallelujah” chorus was designed not to honor the birth or resurrection of Jesus but to celebrate the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in A.D. 70. For most Christians in Handel’s day, this horrible event was construed as divine retribution on Judaism for its failure to accept Jesus as God’s promised Messiah.

[Dick Bachert]

And BTW, it IS a socialist plot to further DUMB DOWN the populace here so they might be more easily led to the utopia being planned for us (whether we want it or not).

And it’s been going on in the government schools for decades!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0lR1KQq2-U

[Wisconsin]

This analysis is “over the top”.

First it ignore Jennen’s own statements of what he is saying.

Second, it puts undue emphasis on word choices, e.g. “nations” rather than “heathen”, that are translation choices and which various versions of the Bible, including those available to Jennen’s use alternatively.

[henbane]

. . .all he's doing is attempting to lay a secular leftist claim to a distinctly non-secular musical work.

Marrissen is obviously on his own jihad to prove some of the greatest masterpieces of classical Christian music are basically antisemetic rants of one kind or another.

Take a look at some of this guy's publications to see the blatant agenda. Without doubt Marrissen has put his revisionist crosshairs on Bach and Handel.

Marissen's books include The Social and Religious Designs of J. S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos (Princeton, 1995), Lutheranism, Anti-Judaism, and Bach's St. John Passion: With an Annotated Literal Translation of the Libretto (Oxford, 1998). His current projects include a book entitled Bach on High Christology and the Infancy Narratives in Luke and Matthew, and a monograph entitled, Handel's Messiah and Christian Triumphalism.

[Alex Murphy]

So “Messiah” lovers may be surprised to learn that the work was meant not for Christmas but for Lent, and that the “Hallelujah” chorus was designed not to honor the birth or resurrection of Jesus but to celebrate the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in A.D. 70.

Ping to read & verify

[Age of Reason]

it IS a socialist plot to further DUMB DOWN the populace

I believe it.

Modern art seems obsessed with the horrible.

Used to be art tried to inspire and uplift us; now it wants to help demoralize and squash us.

For example, here's something I recently read in a book called, "Against the Machine" by Nicols Fox, concerning one of the other arts, that of architecture. In this case, modern architecture.

"[Nikolaus] Pevsner's admiration for the cool detachment of modern architecture; his confidence that, as he said of Walter Gropius, his design ‘represented the creative energy of this world . . . a world of science and technology, of speed and danger, of hard struggles and no personal security.’

"What in any other age would have been a condition to avoid, Pevsner made into a virtue a necessary accommodation to the realities of the modern, industrialized world.”

[Pyro7480]

Classical ping! (Left-wing art snob BARF alert!)

[PghBaldy]

I believe the war is still raging.

[sitetest]

Dear Pyro7480,

Thanks for the ping!

Classical Music Ping List ping!

If you want on or off this list, let me know via FR e-mail.

Thanks,

sitetest

[Cincinna]

Music revisionism at its most ridiculous.

But then again, this is the NY Times, whose “tribute” to Passover was an article proclaiming that the Book of Exodus was false, and that there is “no proof” that the Red Sea parted and the Jews were led out of Egypt. Modern archaeology and science says different.

[endthematrix]

"There are few things more contemptable in this world that a left wing music snob."

Few indeed. An art snob...or an immigration lawyer.

[Paisan]

Well said, sir !

[GadareneDemoniac]

AMEN!!!

The only time they play decent music is during a pledge drive!

And WHY IN H*** did they move Dr. Haas to nights?

Thank heaven for CD players in cars, so I don’t have to listen to “Morning Edition of Clintonism” and “Liberal Things Considered” while stuck in traffic.