Freya Johnston at Literary Review:
Does anything ever truly happen in the Messiah? This extraordinarily popular tripartite choral work, first performed in Dublin in 1742, consists almost entirely of saying rather than of doing. Circling around the redemptive power of Christ, it combines declarations with questions, prophecies, injunctions and exhortations (‘Who is this King of Glory?’, ‘Behold, I tell you a Mystery’, ‘Daughter of Sion, shout’, ‘He shall speak’). Full of urgency, tribulation and momentum, the Messiah nevertheless lacks a plot – unless we class the perennial human emotions of hope and fear, and the movement between the two, as dramatic action.
The oratorio is sometimes described as a commentary, but it is a compilation of sources rather than a work of analysis, its text splicing words (along with the occasional paraphrase) from the King James Bible. The passage with which it begins comes from the fortieth chapter of the Book of Isaiah, where the prophet – who has been denouncing the greed and moral turpitude of Hezekiah, king of Judaea – suddenly moves into a different register entirely.
more here.
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