Music courtesy of The Falls Church Anglican Choir, Falls Church, Virginia, under the musical direction of Simon Dixon. Audio mastering by Andrew Schooley. From Messiah by George Frideric Handel (1742)

Listen to the full playlist for Handel’s Messiah.

Even to chaste inexperienced ears, this sinister sounding bass aria is requited with hope! Dueling lines of melody one a husky male bass, the other a light airy violin—stride together; one claiming darkness, the other dispelling it like a fairytale. What an inimitable way to prophesy the birth of Christ our Savior! But that is what it feels like to me. While the vocalist saunters in the darkness, the violin lifts, brightens, raises the curtain, as if to say “See, there is hope, and it’s coming now, even in the midst of the shadow of death,” illustrating that “the Messiah phenomenon has no parallel in music history.” ¹

Calvin R. Stapert in his book Handel’s Messiah: Comfort for God’s People recounts that Handel owned the iniquity; he felt it, experienced it, from the depths of this darkness even to the heights of the Throne of God. And that is how this oratorio makes us feel like we are owning the experience of walking in darkness and “upon them [or us] hath the light shined.”

Maybe that’s why it is such a thrill to see numbers of people from congregations spontaneously joining the church choir with open mouths and robust voices—up to 10,000 singers in one performance.² If you and I get the opportunity this advent season to attend a performance of Handel’s Messiah, let’s promise each other that we will get up out of our seats to join the throng. It might require some extra shower-singing, but let’s do it! We HAVE seen a great light, and even though we dwell in the land of the shadow of death, that darkness is requited—because that light shines on us.

Notes:
¹ Calvin R. Stapert, Handel’s Messiah: Comfort for God’s People (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010) xi.
² Stapert, Handel’s Messiah, 57.