Word: messiahs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Messiah is one of those unique masterpieces which must be done perfectly if it is to be done at all. Handel created the music in 24 days of concentrated effort. Every phrase plays a key part in the whole; each line is at once a beautiful thing in itself and an ornament to the rest. If even the second violins play sloppily, an excellent chorus cannot atone; if a recitative is hurried, a perfectly paced aria becomes pointless. The grandeur of Handel, like the glory of Bach, cannot rest on Yuletide spirit alone...
However, the Pierian Sodality was fooled into thinking that a Messiah performance could be slapped together in little rehearsal time. Friday night's concert relied too heavily on traditional enthusiasm as a substitute for technical proficiency. After the tenor's Every valley shall be exalted, for instance, the chorus And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed should follow as a natural extension of the aria. Conductor Alfred Nash Patterson permitted long gaps of silence which destroyed the relationship. He misconceived some musical details as well. Instead of grouping the dotted rhythms of the overture in melodic phrases...
Under Mr. Patterson the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra combined spirit and inaccuracy to sound like a typical group of musical amateurs. The strings often played out of tune in both the Messiah and Corelli's Christmas Concerto. Vigorously conducted by Michael Greenebaum '55, the concerto showed off Pierian's excellent first desk players, but they were hampered by the in-accuracies of those behind them...
...Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra and the Pierian Sodality Chorus will present Handel's "Messiah," including the entire Christmas portion and Corelli's Christmas Concerto in Sanders Theatre today...
...troublemaker "), Burton passes the time on Calvary by winning Christ's robe in a dice game. In the earth-shaking storm that follows the Crucifixion, Burton loses his robe, his slave and apparently his sanity. Returned to Italy, he becomes convinced that he was bewitched by the dead Messiah, and accepts an imperial commission to go back to Palestine to investigate the un-Roman activities of the new sect. He finds Mature and the robe at Cana, in Galilee, but exposure to the gentle habits of the Cana Christians puts him on the road to conversion. The final...