Music leads a man’s heart to meet God - George Frideric Handel
was born in 1685 -1759
In April 1759, a great music composer, Handel despite his long
illness and blindness attended for the last time the performance of the Messiah
at Royal Opera House in London. He fainted on stage and passed away eight days
later at the age of 74. He was buried in Westminster Abbey in London with his
tombstone engraved “Messiah” with “I know my Redeemer lives”. After his death,
there was hardly any greater music composer emerging in Britain and an upsurge
of Handel lasted for a century.
During the Baroque era, there were as many music pieces as stars.
Amongst them was three pieces of Oratorio with the theme on the story of
salvation from the Bible. In the history of music, Johnpassion 1723,
Matthäuspassion 1729 and Messiah by Handel are publicly known and accepted as
imperishable masterpieces. Due to different philosophy of composers, these
pieces were presented in various faces.
Handel’s
Messiah are popular in theatres; it objectively describes the life of Jesus and
the process of crucifixion and salvation making the gospel performance on stage
and the biblical stories to reach dramatic new heights. An authoritative figure
in the music industry said, “Handel is the musical master of masters. I am in
total submission to him because he made use of simple notes to produce the
greatest effect”. Simple but popular and exquisite but thorough are two
contrasting elements. Handel’s greatest charm was to be able to combine the
transcendence of religious faith and the aesthetic of secular beliefs together
as one. Such music still remains universally popular without a break even after
two and half century.
