Kent Sweitzer
Artistic director Trevor Stephenson plays harpsichord.
German composer George Frideric Handel spent most of his life in the rough-and-tumble world of opera in London, where fistfights erupted on stage and rival opera companies undermined one another. It was in this turbulent environment that Handel wrote his famous oratorio, Messiah, in 1741.
After 275 years, this Baroque-era masterpiece still inspires and excites the imagination. What makes it so timeless?
Trevor Stephenson, founder and director of the Madison Bach Musicians, one of the city’s fine period-performance groups, says it’s about belonging. “Everyone listening to it feels involved,” he says. “We feel that we are part of some great gift.”
On April 8 and 10, the Madison Bach Musicians will present its first performance of Messiah at the First Congregational Church in Madison. Before each performance, Stephenson will lecture on the work’s structure and history.
While Messiah has been performed in many combinations, with small ensembles or with more than 100 performers, Stephenson says this production, with 43 musicians, is the first of its kind in Madison, since it will take the audience back to Messiah as it was performed at its world premiere in Dublin on April 13, 1742.
UW-Madison professor and Baroque expert Marc Vallon (also a bassoonist) researched the original performance to assist in the effort to re-create the original. “There were seven to eight soloists, 20 orchestra members and a small choir, and the hall in which it premiered wasn’t enormous,” says Stephenson. “All this is about the same in our performance.”
With Vallon at the podium, the ensemble will be tuned according to 18th-century practices and pitched lower than today’s standard concert pitch. The orchestra will play Baroque instruments — string instruments with gut strings instead of synthetic ones and timpani with calfskin heads rather than plastic. Stephenson will play harpsichord and positif organ, two mainstays in Baroque times. Justin Bland, an expert on Baroque trumpet from Denmark, will join the ensemble, and the Madison Boychoir will sing the “Hallelujah” and “Amen” choruses.
With so many Baroque experts and fine musicians on hand, Madisonians will not get a better opportunity to experience a period performance of Messiah.
