Free Republic

Nothing announces the holiday season quite as gloriously as the “Hallelujah” chorus from George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. Orchestras and choirs all over the nation will be performing the famous oratorio as Christmas approaches. But when Handel wrote the work in 1741, he had a different holiday altogether in mind. “It was actually intended for Easter week,” explains conductor Giancarlo Guerrero, who will lead the Nashville Symphony and Chorus in performances of Messiah this weekend. The first performance of the oratorio took place in Dublin in April of 1742, with the London premiere happening the following year in March. In Europe,...

Choral music not heard since the time of Henry VIII has been brought to life for the first time in 500 years, as an academic unearths an untouched manuscript and shows it to a modern choir. The manuscript, a book of 34 religious songs, was given to Henry VIII as a lavish gift from a French diplomat in his early reign. Containing songs referencing Henry and his then-bride Catherine of Aragon, it is considered the most "luxurious" surviving diplomatic gift of its kind. It remained in the Royal Collection after the king's death, and was later given to the nation...