Hey David. How many Messiah's did you do this year? I'm done with my spate of them, and the count for this Xmas season is 6, and for the year 2007...14. Most were truncated version with only the Christmas section, but they always include the Hallelujah chorus...which I never got, since it comes from the Easter section
Maybe because audiences expect that if they're attending a
Messiah, there will be the
Hallelujah Chorus? I mean, even if they don't know the recitatives, everyone knows the
Hallelujah Chorus.Some Christmas music trivia: The familiar tune used for the Christmas carol "Joy to the World" was cobbled together from various themes from
Messiah. The tune was popularized in the U.S. by the hymn composer Lowell Mason, who included it in a collection of tunes that he published in 1836. Mason named the tune "Antioch" for reasons apparently unknown.