‘Every valley – the story of Handel’s Messiah’ – a book by Charles King

Nothing lifts the soul more than participating in a performance of Messiah. I can still recall a come-and-sing performance in Winchester Cathedral many years ago where perhaps 1000 singers sang as a quartet, each knowing their parts so well that they could focus on the conductor David Hill. Messiah has such a special place in our choral hearts that I opened Every Valley – The Story of Handel’s Messiah with great expectations. In this book Charles King, Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University, Washington DC sets out to provide (from the dust jacket) a “glittering narrative history of the creation of Handel’s Messiah”.

Christopher Hogwood has commented

“Messiah is not typical Handel oratorio; there are no named characters, as are usually found in Handel’s setting of the Old Testament stories, possibly to avoid charges of blasphemy. It is a meditation rather than a drama of personalities, lyrical in method; the narration of the story is carried on by implication, and there is no dialogue”

When I review a book I start at the index and work backwards. This practice comes from many years of reading and assessing PhD theses. It gives me an immediate sense of the breadth and depth of the book. The purpose of an index is to assist readers in making future use of the book after the initial read-through. When I see an entry for Athens, ancient 30 I start to be concerned. There is also an entry for e-Bay. A reference to e-Bay in a book on Handel? Sadly there are similar examples on every page of the index. I am very surprised that Bodley Head did not think it important to have an indexer with the appropriate expertise and experience. Or did the publisher resort to ChatGPT?

The list of resources runs to around 300 citations. However, important resources are missing. For example, the book on Handel research by Mary Ann Parker, John Arnold’s superb 2007 386pp thesis on the historical context of Handel’s Semele (which covers many of the topics in this book), Marian Van Til’s book on the development of the Messiah and the thesis by Jonathan Rhodes Lee (2013 232pp) on Handel’s oratorios, though a journal article by Rhodes is cited.

The first thirteen chapters provide a very detailed picture of London in the time of Handel and of the people that were active in literature, politics, music and society. The depth of detail is quite amazing but it gets in the way of telling the story of Messiah and maintaining the momentum of the act of reading. The dramatis personae are profiled a chapter at a time but it is not until quite late in the book that the societal threads (especially around Thomas Coram and the Foundling Hospital) start to be pulled together.

Strangely there is little reference to the composers who were Handel’s contemporaries. Thomas Arne (1710-1778) does appear but John Eccles (1668-1735) and Maurice Greene (1696-1755) are missing, and the impresario David Garrick (1717-1779) only gets a passing reference.

The reader has to wait until Chapter 14 (p187) to be introduced to the development of the score by Handel. A remarkable feature of the score is that Handel completed it in just 24 days, from 22 August to 14 September 1741. This is covered in pp189 to 192 but without any comments on the quite radical way in which Handel structured the oratorio. David Block’s analysis makes interesting reading in this respect.

If you have an interest in London social life in the first half of the 18^th Century then I am sure that you will be impressed with the depth of research (there are around 600 side notes!) though perhaps not the depth of analysis. In my view this book adds little to the vast amount of research that has been published over many years seeking to define just why Messiah is such a jewel in the musical crown, and has been since 1741. I bought this book with a Christmas gift of a book token but I doubt I will be adding it to the books from Ellen Harris, Jane Glover and Christopher Hogwood that for me get to the heart of the work and the genius of Handel in following the path set out by Hogwood quoted at the beginning of this review.