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Fifty Sermons on Handel's Messiah
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2011
Extract
When William Cowper introduced these verses into The Task in 1785 the gigantic Handel Commemoration of the preceding year still rang fresh in the ears of thousands of Englishmen. In 1783 several musical amateurs had proposed to commemorate the centenary of Handel's birth and the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death by a series of stupendous Handel performances on a hitherto unprecedented scale, and the first great Handel Festival had accordingly taken place in Westminster Abbey in the late spring of 1784, warmly patronized by George III and the greater nobility, and enthusiastically attended by more than three thousand persons from every corner of the kingdom. A vocal and instrumental band of 525 performers, “inflamed and actuated by the Muse of Handel,” made this mammoth celebration “the most splendid tribute ever paid to posthumous fame,” and current periodicals exhausted every superlative in praising the grand occasion. The European Magazine reported that “the immense volume and torrent of sound, was almost too much for the head or the sense to bear — we were elevated into a species of delirium.” The performance was in “so superior, and so exalted a stile, that it must not be subjected to the rules of pettyfogging criticism,” since “so grand and beautiful a spectacle, with at the same time a feast so rich and perfect, has not been presented to the public eye within our memory.”
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References
1 The European Magazine, May 1784 (Supplement).
2 Burney, Charles, An Account of the Musical Performances in Westminster Abbey and the Pantheon … in Commemoration of Handel, London, 1785, p. 73Google Scholar (second series of pagination).
3 Cowper, William, Correspondence (ed. Wright, Thomas), London and New York, 1904, I, 352Google Scholar.
4 Ibid., II, 270.
5 Ibid., II, 213–214.
6 The Monthly Review, XXIII, 335 (October 1760)Google Scholar.
7 The Monthly Review, XXXVII, 316 (October 1767)Google Scholar.
8 The Monthly Review, XLIII, 75 (July 1770)Google Scholar.
9 The Monthly Review, LXV, 201 (September 1781)Google Scholar.
10 The Monthly Review, LXXXI, 93 (July 1789)Google Scholar.
11 Newton, John, Messiah: Fifty Expository Discourses, on the Series of Scriptural Passages, which form the Subject of the celebrated Oratorio of Handel, London, 1786, I, xv–xviGoogle Scholar.
12 Ibid., I, 5.
13 Ibid., I, 2–4.
14 Ibid., I, 182–183.
15 Ibid., I, 404.
16 Ibid., I, 63–65.
17 Ibid., I, 67–68.
18 Cowper, Correspondence, II, 229.
19 Newton, Messiah, I, 206.
20 Ibid., I, 28–29.
21 Ibid., I, 23.
22 Ibid., I, 44.
23 Ibid., I, 166.
24 Ibid., I, 123.
25 Ibid., I, 47–48.
26 Ibid., II, 175–176, 187.
27 Ibid., II, 170.
28 Ibid., II, 265–266.
29 Ibid., II, 459–460.
30 Cowper, Correspondence, II, 336–337.
31 Ibid., II, 338. For his motto to Messiah Newton finally chose a verse from the Old Testament: “Oh that they were wise, that they understood this!” (Deuteronomy 32:29).
32 The Monthly Review, LXXVII, 211–213 (September 1787)Google Scholar.
33 The Unpublished and Uncollected Poems of William Cowper (ed. Wright, Thomas) London, 1900, pp. 61–62Google Scholar.
34 Cowper, Correspondence, II, 272–273.
35 The Task, VI, 632–657.
36 Anna Seward, Letters, Edinburgh, 1811, I, 112–113.
37 Ibid., I, 121.
38 Ibid., I, 128–129.
39 Ibid., I, 255.
40 Ibid., V, 320.
41 Ibid., I, 296–297.
42 Ibid., VII, 159.
43 Ibid., VI, 165.
44 Ibid., VI, 63.
45 Ibid., VI, 60.
46 Ibid., VI, 166.
46 Ibid., I, 183–184.
47 Ibid., V, 327–328.
49 Ibid., VI, 65–66.
50 Seward, Anna, Poetical Works (ed. SirScott, Walter), Edinburgh, 1810, III, 5–14Google Scholar.
51 Ibid, III, 5–7.
52 Ibid., III, 8–9.
53 Ibid., III, 9 (note).
54 Ibid., III, 14 (note).
55 A Series of Reflections on the Sacred Oratorio of the Messiah, by a Lady, London, 1812, p. vii. Of this rare work a copy of the fifth edition (1831) is available in the Lowell Mason Collection of the Yale University Library. The Sterling Memorial Library of Yale University possesses microfilms of the first (1812) and seventh (1836) editions.
56 The Christian Remembrancer, XIII, 153–156Google Scholar (March 1831).
67 Dean [Edward B.] Ramsay, Two Lectures on the Genius of Handel, Edinburgh and London, 1862, p. 66.
58 Ibid., p. 72.
59 Ibid., p. 79.
60 Ibid., p. 72.
61 Ibid., pp. 70–71.
62 Ibid., pp. 74–75.
63 Ibid., p. 80.
64 Ibid., pp. 75–76.
65 Ibid., pp. 79–80.
66 Ibid., pp. 88–89.