Download How Handel`s Messiah Helped London`s Orphans – and Vice Versa

How Handel's Messiah Helped London's Orphans – and Vice Versa
George Handel's oratorio is Britain's best-loved choral work. But without its links to the
Foundling Hospital, one of Georgian London's leading charities, we might never have
known it.
Here's a good pub quiz question. In which piece of music, apart from Messiah, did
Handel include his famous Hallelujah Chorus? Answer: the Foundling Hospital Anthem.
The composer frequently recycled sections of his own music: his coronation anthem
Zadok the Priest appeared in his later oratorio Esther, his oratorio Israel in Egypt
borrows from his funeral anthem for Queen Caroline, Messiah itself borrows from his
early Italian duets. This was common practice – Handel didn't just borrow from his own
work, he also borrowed from Telemann, Muffat, Bononcini and others, so much so that
Handel's contemporary, the composer William Boyce, said of Handel: "He takes other
men's pebbles, and polishes them into diamonds.". Perhaps another less well known
part of Messiah's story and Handel's music is its intimate connection to the Foundling
Hospital, and the composer's lifelong support of the UK's first children's charity, which
continues today as the children's charity Coram.
Writing opera was a financially precarious business, then, as now. In 18th-century
England, it was up to the composer to rent the theatre, hire the singers and musicians,
and pay for costumes and scenery. Profits were hard to come by and the Italian operas
Handel had been writing in the early years of his London career were falling out of
fashion. In developing the English oratorio, the composer found a way to capitalise on
the power of an orchestra, soloists and a choir of voices, while dispensing with the need
for expensive sets, costumes and props.
However, oratorios, like operas, still required a large performing venue. For the London
premiere [of Messiah in 1743], Handel rented the Covent Garden Theatre from his
friend John Rich for a week's run. Although a popular form of entertainment, the theatre
was considered disreputable by most and even sacrilegious by some, and was deemed
an inappropriate place to perform the sacred story of the Messiah. Indeed Handel was
so concerned about objections that he suppressed the word "Messiah" in
advertisements – the work was listed only as "A new sacred Oratorio". But even so it
wasn't a success as noted by the Earl of Shaftesbury in his memoirs.
Had it not been for a newly established children's charity, Britain's dearly loved choral
work could have shared the fate of many of Handel's operas and faded into obscurity.
For, without the Foundling Hospital, Messiah would have been silenced.
Following 17 years of campaigning, the philanthropist Thomas Coram was granted a
royal charter in 1739 by George II to establish a new charity to care for the babies that
would otherwise have been abandoned on doorsteps and rubbish heaps by desperate
mothers, usually young and unmarried, who had nowhere else to turn.
Unusually, one of its founding governors was an artist, William Hogarth. A committed
supporter of the Foundling Hospital and a canny entrepreneur, Hogarth realised that if
the charity was to succeed, it needed to establish itself in the public's imagination. He
first designed the hospital's logo and then donated a full-length portrait of the charity's
indomitable founder, his friend, Thomas Coram. This stunning painting can still be seen
today in the Foundling Museum, on the site of the former Hospital. Having set the ball
rolling, Hogarth then persuaded leading artists such as Joshua Reynolds, Allan Ramsay
and Thomas Gainsborough to donate works. In the mid-18th century, there were no
public art galleries. By effectively creating at the Hospital the UK's first public art gallery,
Hogarth gave the public a reason to visit and the hospital rapidly became one of the
most fashionable charities in London. Once there, a visitor would see not only the best
in contemporary British portraiture, landscape and maritime painting, they would also
see the children at mealtime and singing in the chapel, and perhaps donate money.
Whether Handel was inspired by the astute creative philanthropy of his artist
colleagues, we will never know. What is certain is that he recognised the chapel's
potential as a performance venue that was free from the troublesome associations of
the theatre. In May 1749, he approached the hospital's governors and offered to
conduct a benefit concert. The programme included the first performance of Handel's
"specially written" Foundling Hospital Anthem. The music was borrowed in part from his
funeral anthem for Queen Caroline, his oratorio Susanna, and music by Lotti and
Kuhnau, ending with the Hallelujah Chorus, lifted directly from Messiah – a work that
few of his audience would have known. Also included on the bill was his Music for the
Royal Fireworks, which had been premiered the month before, when its rehearsal at
Vauxhall Gardens had caused a three-hour traffic jam of carriages, such was his
popularity and people's desire to hear the music.
Thereafter, Messiah was performed each year in the Foundling Hospital chapel, for the
benefit of the charity, a tradition that continued until the 1770s. Handel conducted or
attended every performance until his death in 1759. These concerts not only helped
secure the Oratorio's place in the nation's affections, they succeeded in raising a huge
sum of money for the charity.
As a final act of generosity, Handel left in his will a fair copy of the Messiah score to the
governors of the Foundling Hospital, thus enabling the charity to continue staging the
benefit concerts – which they could not have done without the performing parts
available for them to use. The score and parts were delivered to the hospital three
weeks after Handel's death, and can be seen still today on display in the Foundling
Museum, alongside his original will.
Caro Howell, Director of the Foundling Museum, London, England
Tokens of Love:
Every child admitted to the Foundling Hospital was baptized
and given a new name. Mothers also left a token such as a
coin or button which could be used to identify their child if they
returned to reclaim them.