{"id":1771803,"date":"2022-12-12T03:17:41","date_gmt":"2022-12-12T08:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1771803"},"modified":"2022-12-12T03:17:45","modified_gmt":"2022-12-12T08:17:45","slug":"ditching-your-holiday-hits-for-handels-messiah-connects-you-to-the-past-and-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/ditching-your-holiday-hits-for-handels-messiah-connects-you-to-the-past-and-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Ditching Your Holiday Hits For Handel\u2019s \u2018Messiah\u2019 Connects You To The Past And Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fditching-your-holiday-hits-for-handels-messiah-connects-you-to-the-past-and-future%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1771803&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>\u201cTradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire,\u201d said Gustav Mahler, the Romantic composer, paraphrasing St. Thomas More. Last weekend, my choir director shared a similar sentiment as we prepared to take the stage to perform Handel\u2019s \u201cMessiah.\u201d As Mariah Carey\u2019s \u201cAll I Want for Christmas is You\u201d tops <a href=\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/charts\/hot-holiday-songs\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Billboard\u2019s Holiday 100<\/a> and department stores pump ubiquitous Christmas pop through speakers, yearly performances of \u201cMessiah\u201d offer respite from saccharine holiday nostalgia. \u201cMessiah,\u201d which tells the scriptural story of salvation, is a tradition that manages to preserve fire.<\/p>\n<p>Invocations of \u201ctradition\u201d at this time of year bring to mind carols crooned by Josh Groban \u2014 or, if tastes run older, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and Dean Martin. If these songs preserve fire, it\u2019s a comfortable, domesticated flame that flickers uncertainly. \u201cWhite Christmas\u201d and \u201cThe Christmas Song\u201d drip with emotion, evoking snow-dusted memories that Thomas Kinkade might paint. They\u2019re beautiful songs, and they bring beautiful things to mind, but they fail to address the central longings of Christmas, settling instead for an easily commercialized nostalgia.<\/p>\n<p>The fire worth preserving lies further beyond the greatest generation, found in works like those of Handel, as well as the choral works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, and even John Rutter. Classical Christmas music suggests that perhaps we should long for something older and richer than the post-war America of our parents and grandparents.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Tradition preserves a fire that, rightly understood, defies sputtering candles. This fire blazes, bonfire-like, too grand to understand, too bold to approach, too majestic for pop music to capture. It is a fire not stolen from the gods but given to us by God.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps we should cling to our cultural inheritance instead of exchanging it for a constant cycle of seasonal singles. Each year, pop artists remake tradition in their own image with albums filled with covers of standard carols. The wonder of \u201cMessiah\u201d and other music like it, however, is the resistance to a market ideology that demands constant newness while stifling genuine creativity.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When performing \u201cMessiah,\u201d<em> <\/em>musicians participate in a lineage of sound unchanged since the 18th century. In an era of auto-tune and synth, the baroque orchestra sounds almost otherworldly. And yet, it is a work of such delicate balance and attention to the human voice that soloists need no microphone to be heard over the strains of strings, oboes, and organs. Lasting more than three hours when sung straight through, the oratorio is rarely performed in full. Unlike sugary pop hits, which clock in around three or four minutes, \u201cMessiah\u201d is a test of endurance for performers and audiences alike. And it\u2019s worth every second.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There is a flame, wild and untamed, in the gymnastic figuration of Handel\u2019s arias, but the oratorio\u2019s compelling power comes from the story it tells. In the work\u2019s opening numbers, a soloist begs, \u201cBut who may abide the day of His coming? And who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a refiner\u2019s fire\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlike pop hits, &#8216;Messiah&#8217; is a test of endurance for performers and audiences alike. And it\u2019s worth every second.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1617,"featured_media":1771806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[7945,7949,7947,6919,3899,7946,7948,7496],"class_list":["post-1771803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-messiah","tag-connects","tag-ditching","tag-federalist","tag-future","tag-handels","tag-hits","tag-holiday"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1617"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1771803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1771806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1771803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1771803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1771803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}