What's so Wonderful About Handel's Messiah?

I trust your Christmas celebration has been a blessing to you and your family and an honor to Christ our King. I've managed to get to several wonderful Christmas concerts, and, during this season, no less than three of those were Messiah performances (performance doesn't seem like the right word, more like a magisterial sung sermon). Then it occurred to me that in 2025 I've been to four Messiah events, the first one while leading my church history tour last June in Halle at the Market Church. It was an unforgettable experience . I can't promise this specific blessing on the France Battlefield Bond Tour, June 17-27, 2026, but I'm pretty sure God has ordained wonderful things for us on that tour (it's not too late to register--what a great Christmas gift for the family!). I'm a contributor to several chapters to a forthcoming anthology, including a chapter on GF Handel. Since it's almost Christmas, and I love the Messiah so much (double entendre, rather have been loved by the Messiah so much), I thought I'd share that chapter with you here. Hope it blesses you this Christmas season!

Handel's birthplace town, Halle, Germany--Join me in France for the tour of a lifetime!

GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL 1685-1759

One warm Sunday evening, I entered the Market Church in the city of Halle in Germany accompanied by friends from my tour group. What was about to unfold would prove to be one of the most memorable musical experiences of my life. Here we were, a few blocks away from the birthplace of George Frideric Handel; we had just retraced the short route he would have taken as a boy, not only to attend the Lutheran worship services, but to come for his childhood music lessons. He played on that organ, the pipes visible just above me; he played when he was still so young he couldn’t reach the foot pedalboard. And here we were to take in a performance of highlights from his magisterial oratorio Messiah. My pulse quickened.

There was the usual preconcert murmuring of voices, feet shuffling on the flagstones, choir members taking their places above the orchestra: violins, oboes, trumpets, cellos, timpani—musicians tuning their instruments, the preparatory sounds echoing throughout the vaulted Gothic splendor of the place. There was a mounting anticipation in my heart of what we were about to hear, to experience. I wasn’t alone. As the conductor and the soloists filed onto the chancel and took their bows, a hush fell over the medieval church; there was a breathless expectancy.

And then it began, right here where young George would have been brought as an infant; week-by-week, as a little boy, as an adolescent, as a teen aged young man. Fast forward to 1741, Handel’s middle age; fast forward two-and-a-half centuries, to right now: “The Lord God omnipotent reigneth… Worthy is the Lamb that was slain… Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

Birth and Early Life

George Frideric was born on February 23, 1685, to Georg and Dorothea Handel of Halle, Saxony, in Germany. The town of Halle is only a few miles away from the birthplace of Martin Luther, born two hundred years earlier. Young George grew up in a devout Lutheran family, with daily Bible reading and the singing of Lutheran hymns. He no doubt sang Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress” many times growing up. Throughout his life, Handel would be a careful and regular reader of his Bible. George’s father was a barber-surgeon and made a good living for his family. While George was still very young, he began showing a fascination with and then an extraordinary aptitude for music. But his father would have none of it. How could his son provide for a family if he was a mere musician?

You may have heard the joke: a boy tells his mother when he grows up, he wants to play drums in a rock band. “You’ll have to decide,” says his mother. “You can’t do both.” Handel’s father seemed to think the same way. He wanted his son to grow up to become a lawyer, just as Luther’s father had wanted for him. Lawyers were well respected, and usually made more stable money for their families than musicians and composers.

But young Handel took every opportunity he could to learn to play musical instruments. It came so naturally and easily to him. As a child, he played the violin, the oboe, the clavichord (a precursor to the piano), and others. In fact, he persuaded a friend to help him smuggle a clavichord up the stairs in his house to the attic. His mother knew about her son’s musical passion and did the best she could to encourage him to develop his gift, even while honoring his father and preparing for the study of law.

One day, Handel’s father was called to the court of the duke. Handel so wanted to join his father. When the family carriage took off down the street from their home, young Handel ran along behind. Somehow, his little boy legs managed to keep pace through the town. Finally, his father halted the carriage and let his son come along. One morning during their visit in court, the duke heard the organ playing in the chapel. It was being played with energy and beauty. “Who is that playing my organ so splendidly?” When the duke learned that it was his surgeon’s son, he persuaded Handel’s father to let his son study both music and law.

The court musician Frideric Wilhelm Zachow was so impressed he wanted to begin formal music lessons with the five-year-old. It took Handel’s father a while to warm to the idea, but by the time the boy was nine, he was taking organ lessons at the Market Church a few blocks from his home. His little legs and feet dangling above the foot-pedal keyboard. Still very much a boy, Handel wasn’t satisfied simply playing the music others had written, so he began composing for oboe, violin, organ, and the full orchestra. By the time he was eleven he was writing cantatas for the worship service at the Market Church.

Handel discovers opera

And then his father suddenly died. To honor his father, Handel did his best to continue the study of law. But when young George turned eighteen, an opportunity to further his study of music arose in the city of Hamburg, a center of opera. Operas were performed with elaborate stage sets, extravagant costumes, bombastic sound effects, weapons and fireworks, and the actors singing, not speaking, their lines. The extravaganza of opera overwhelmed his teenage imagination.

In Hamburg, Handel made friends with another young musical genius named Matheson, who loved composing and conducting operas. Operas were conducted from the keyboard, usually a harpsichord (unlike a piano where a hammer hits the strings, the harpsichord plucks the strings). Handel’s friend liked to star in his operas, but he also liked to conduct from the keyboard. So, he would have Handel conduct while he acted as the hero in the opening scenes. But after killing himself off, he would come down from the stage and push Handel aside and take over conducting from the keyboard for the rest of the opera. Handel played along—for a while.

The story goes that on one such occasion, Handel didn’t want to give up the keyboard and the conducting. He was enjoying conducting, so, he just kept playing the harpsichord. Matheson was angry, and challenged his friend to a duel with swords after the opera. They stepped out into a snowy night and drew their rapiers. Matheson lunged at Handel, but his sword caught on a brass button on Handel’s coat, and shattered into pieces. Handel felt that God had preserved his life for a purpose. He and Matheson shook hands, laughed it off, and went to have a fine dinner in a restaurant after the clumsy duel.

Handel writes his first oratorio

In 1706, Handel traveled to Italy, the center for opera and culture, staying with the famous Medici family in Florence, and he rode gondolas in Venice. At first, he continued to write operas in Italy, but when he arrived in the domed magnificence of Rome, operas were not allowed in the eternal city, the seat of Roman Catholicism. So, in 1708, Handel composed his first oratorio, Resurrection. Recall that Handel was a serious student of his Bible. Oratorio, unlike opera, was a genre that required only the best musicians and vocalists—no stage sets, no fireworks, no expensive production costs. Oratorio was the telling of a Bible story accompanied by music. Drawing from his Bible reading, Handel’s Resurrection oratorio was performed to great appreciation on Easter Sunday of 1708. Little did he then realize the role this genre of musical composition—and his commitment to reading his Bible—would play in his future life and his legacy.

While in Venice, Handel heard about the court in London, and how much the king and queen appreciated German composers of Italian opera. He was still young, unmarried, and impulsive (Handel would never marry). He decided to get on a boat and make his way to England.

Handel in England

In 1711, Handel had the opportunity to play his music for the queen of England. He was encouraged by her enthusiasm for his music, which she thought was wonderful.

When Handel put his mind to it, he could compose music very quickly. He decided he wanted to compose an Italian opera for London. He would create a libretto (a little book with the Italian lyrics translated into English), that way non-Italian speaking Englishmen could follow along as the elaborate drama unfolded on the stage. He wrote his first opera for England, called Rinaldo, and it was well received. So, he planned to write more operas for the English to enjoy.

But there was a problem. Many English people didn’t understand why all the talking in the drama had to be sung. It seemed odd to them. It wasn’t very life-like. Why not just say it?

Handel didn’t read the room very well. He decided that what the English needed was the most elaborate and expensive operatic productions. He formed his own opera company, and began composing, and gathering the best actors and singers, the best musicians, the best designers and builders of magnificent stage sets—and it was all very expensive.

The queen and her German-born husband, King George I, attended and thoroughly enjoyed Handel’s productions. They made Handel the court musician who would teach music to their children. Meanwhile, nobles and the peers of the realm, and wealthy merchants attended—but largely because the king and queen liked the operas.

Handel’s music was becoming more famous in other genre. Again, drawing heavily from his Bible reading, he managed to compose music for church choirs and for organ, and orchestral pieces. In 1717, Handel was commissioned by the king to compose Water Music. The king and queen and their court would be comfortably lounging on the royal barge on the River Thames running through London, and Handel would conduct his orchestra on another barge floating alongside the royal family and court. It was a warm summer evening, the banks of the river lined with thousands of Londoners, hailing the royals, and listening to Handel’s music. What could go wrong? Hopefully, no barges would sink, no percussionist would fall overboard. The king and queen loved it so much, they had Handel perform Water Music on the river two more times that summer.

Things were going so well for Handel in England, he became a naturalized subject of the realm—an Englishman. After the death of George I, Handel was commissioned to compose a coronation anthem for the crowning of King George II.

Later, after the English victory in the War of the Austrian Succession (1749), Handel composed Music for the Royal Fireworks, a grand orchestral piece divided into three parts: the turbulent rumbling of drums and sounding of trumpets, simulating the battles of the war; followed by a peaceful, gentle, flowing movement, representing the peace treaty; concluding with a rousing celebratory final movement of rejoicing—at which the royal fireworks were supposed to be lit.

Handel, no doubt, hoped that this would be as successful as his Water Music had been. Though it wasn’t an opera, no expense was spared in creating the stage set for the performance. They actually built an elaborate palace from which fireworks would be launched at just the exact moment in the music.

Until everything went wrong. Somehow, the palace caught on fire. Handel’s music was drowned out by people frantically yelling and running for buckets of water. The fire grew larger. Suddenly, the crates of fireworks themselves caught fire; rockets exploded, whistling through the night’s sky, creating a conflagration out of the palace. Everything was chaos. While the stage went up in flames, the designer of the palace drew his sword, challenging the man in charge of the fireworks to a duel on the spot. Handel and his orchestra fled to safety.

Waning interest in his music

For a time, Handel continued to compose operas. It just had to be operas! He spent more money, hired the finest vocalist and musicians, and created the most grandiose settings for his operas. At one performance, proud singers with fragile egos offended each other and got into a fistfight right on the stage. The audience thought the unscripted altercation was amusing, but English interest in opera was fickle and fading rapidly. A rival composer, created a mock popular opera, The Beggar’s Opera, that made fun of Handel’s overblown productions. The artistic community can be very cruel; some called Handel the “German nincompoop,” and wished him good-riddance back to Germany.

Handel was all alone. His opera company went bankrupt. He was broke. He’d spent decades trying to bring opera to England. He had failed. Maybe it was for the best. He would return to Germany, to Halle, his hometown. But before he could, he got very sick. Likely he had a stroke.

Would Handel be “sermon proof and sickness proof,” as Samuel Rutherford had observed about unbelievers? As Handel recovered a measure of strength from his illness, he was asked to compose music for a fundraiser in Dublin, Ireland. He would be paid well—he needed the money—and the proceeds would ironically go to help get men out of debtor’s prison, where Handel feared he might end up himself.

A commission to avoid debtor’s prison

But what genre of music would he compose? Handel recalled his Resurrection oratorio performed on Easter Sunday in Rome, many years ago. Depressed as he was, the idea sounded promising. As he had done then, he opened his Bible.

And then one evening, his friend Charles Jennens, a devout Bible-believing Christian, visited poor Handel. Jennens had spent a great deal of time and energy in compiling a libretto. Like Handel, he too was a serious reader of his Bible. The lyrics were taken directly from the words of Holy Scripture. His purpose, what had compelled him to compile this body of work, was the mounting influence of what was called Deism. Deists believed there was a God, that he made the world, but that he was detached and not involved in his world personally. God just wound up the clock of the world in the beginning, set it to a certain course, and took his hands off the helm, as it were. Most Deists were good moralists and derived their sense of right and wrong from the Bible, to be sure. But all that the Bible said about Jesus, the Incarnation, that he was the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the good news of the gospel—Deists didn’t think much of that.

But Jennens did. He had meticulously compiled the key prophetic passages from the Old Testament foretelling the coming of Jesus. Jennens passionately believed the Bible was the very words of God, and he was determined to get things right. He wanted to have this libretto be the shot over the bow of the false teaching of Deists, many who filled pulpits in the churches in England. And he knew the best way to get them to listen to his work. Have his friend, and fellow lover of the Bible and all it said about Jesus, have Handel compose music to accompany his biblical defense of the Deity of Jesus Christ. But would Handel do it?

Operas had failed him. His bank account had failed him. His health had failed him. Handel agreed. He calculated that it would take him at least a year to compose the music for such a vast oratorio, a biblical story set to instrumental and vocal music. Yes, it would take a year. But he would do it.

How he composed Messiah

In the providence of God, it was shortly after meeting with Jennens that Handel was approached by charities in Dublin. They wanted him to compose a fundraiser for them. They would pay him a handsome commission, and the proceeds would help get men out of debtor’s prison. Handel no doubt swallowed a lump in his throat at the thought of going to prison for debts he owed.

On August 22, 1741, Handel sat down at his harpsichord. He took up a pile of blank parchment, a pot of ink, sharpened a goose quill pen, and set to work. Something strange came over him. He barely stopped to eat and sleep. He finished the first part in six days. Considerably ahead of schedule. Rather than take a break, he pressed on. Nine days later he had completed the second part, and six days after that he finished the third and final part; two days later he had completed the entire orchestration, the parts for the various instruments. He rarely stopped for food or rest. Certainly, he had written operas in short periods of time. This was nothing like that. He had written as if under a compulsion, almost a divine compulsion. In only twenty-four days, he had completed the entire oratorio, two-hundred-sixty pages of music! He had never composed so much so rapidly in his life.

Handel later told a friend that when he composed the Hallelujah Chorus, “I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the great God himself.”

How his oratorio was received

Word got out. Handel, you will recall, had critics. What had the German nincompoop come up with this time? they no doubt derided. Irishman Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver’s Travels, and no friend of Christianity, though he was the dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, in disgust, forbade musicians from the cathedral to audition for the performance of Handel’s Messiah.

In anticipation of Easter, April 13, 1742, Handel conducted the premiere performance of Messiah at Fishamble Street Music Hall in Dublin, just around the corner from the cathedral. The anticipation and demand for advance tickets was so great, men were asked not to wear swords (which took up space in the hall), and women were asked not to wear hooped skirts (which freed up even more space). The premiere was a thunderous sensation. The music hall was packed with 700 attendees, who contributed 400 pounds sterling ($25,000 in today’s value), freeing 142 men from prison back into the labor force. Music reviewers were loquacious in their praise, one dubbing it “the most finished piece of music” he had ever heard.

But it would be almost a year before Messiah and Handel would be invited to London. Irony of laughable ironies, Anglican clergy, many of whom were Deists and didn’t believe in the deity of Jesus Christ in the first place, protested its London premiere on the grounds that the title was blasphemy. Handel demurred and changed the title for the premiere in the metropolis to “A New Sacred Oratorio.” He wanted it to be heard by these unbelieving Deists. King George II and his court attended the premiere. At the opening notes of the Hallelujah Chorus, the king rose to his feet. The entire concert hall followed suit, and so it has been in the English-speaking world ever since. Experts are not in agreement as to why he rose. Any of us who attend Messiah feel in our inner being why the king stood. (But it appears to be only an English phenomenon; the Germans that warm Sunday evening at the Market Church in Halle did not rise. I didn’t want to be conspicuous, but it required great restraint on my part, to remain seated).

Then as now, the London concert goer can be hard to please. The king’s enthusiasm, notwithstanding (perhaps for some, because of the king’s enthusiasm, or because the Irish liked it so much), Handel’s great work received only tentative reviews. That soon changed. Over the next twenty-five years, Handel would conduct Messiah in thirty performances. Because of its unabashed biblical content, we might expect that most of those would have been in churches. But only one was in a church, Bristol Cathedral, a church a few blocks from where Charles Wesley lived with his family and wrote many of his hymns. Charles’ brother John attended the performance at the cathedral and reportedly commented, “I doubt if that congregation was ever so serious at a sermon as they were during this performance.” Messiah was always performed near Easter rather than Christmas, as it has shifted to today.

Handel’s death and legacy

Perhaps fittingly, the day before Easter, 1759, seventy-four-year-old Handel died; anticipating his death, he had said that he would die trusting to “meet his good God, his sweet Lord and Savior, on the day of his Resurrection.” One of his close friends said this of Handel, “He died as he lived—a good Christian, with a true sense of his duty to God and to man, and in perfect charity with all the world.”

Another friend, Sir John Hawkins, recollected, “Throughout his life, [Handel] manifested a deep sense of religion. In conversation he would frequently declare the pleasure he felt in setting the Scriptures to music, and how contemplating the many sublime passages in the Psalms had contributed to his edification.”

Was Handel a True Christian?

Some have wondered if Handel himself was truly born-again, or was he just the product of an age where people still gave lip service to believing, when they really didn’t. I don’t know his heart, but few that I can think of in the history of Western Civilization have been more used of God to be an instrument of the seasonal proclamation of the Word of God then George Friderick Handel. I’d certainly like to believe that he was a true Christian, a true believer. He was a lover of the Bible, and a regular reader of his copy; it was said that he knew his Bible better than most bishops (then, given the biblical ignorance of most bishops, that isn’t really saying very much).

Only God knows the true condition of any man’s soul; the rest of us will have to wait to know until eternity. Meanwhile, we can look at how God used Handel—and continues to do so, over and over, season by season. If God can use Balaam’s donkey, if he can speak through an ass, speak truth through the most unlikely of instruments, well most certainly he can use the great nurtured and collected skills of Handel’s life, all orchestrated by God to bring about great good—great gospel good!

R. C. Sproul observed, “…for one brief season the secular world broadcasts the message of Christ over every radio station and television channel in the land. Never does the church get as much free air time as during the Christmas season.” Add to all that, the vast reach of Handel’s Messiah during the season of Advent (and during Easter, the season he originally wrote the oratorio for).

Consider the many devout unbelievers, but ones who appreciate higher culture, the fine arts, classical music (as it is called). Perhaps scowling and blinking in bewilderment, many unbelievers buy their tickets every Christmas and go to hear a live performance of Handel’s Messiah. They dutifully stand to their feet during the Hallelujah Chorus. They perhaps do so in much the same spirit as they go cut their Christmas tree and decorate it—and play Christmas carols on a loop as they do so.

I love going to live performances of Messiah. I always weep shamelessly. I have taken the whole family to Benaroya Hall in Seattle, one of the most leftist cities in the country, to hear a live performance of Handel’s Messiah, the music hall packed to the rafters with pink-haired neopagans. What’s going on here?

How should we respond to Handel’s Messiah?

I believe that God’s Word will not return void. I believe that because God himself tells us in his Word that his Word will not return void. Here at Christmas, we have this proclamation happening, accompanied by some of the most magisterial music ever composed. Hundreds of thousands of people, unbelievers, secularists, who don’t really believe in the Christ of Christmas; they don’t believe the story is true that God became man, was born of a virgin, that Jesus really was and is the Son of God. Even as they declare, “I don’t believe any of that,” yet they come and they sit for 2 1/2 hours under the singing of words taken directly from the Bible. God’s Word will not return void.

What should you and I do? Pray. As we listen, as our hearts are thrilled with the fulfilled prophecies, “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given… and his name shall be called: Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace!” Tears streaming down your cheeks at the wonder of it all, pray for those around you. They’ve come for the high cultural experience. Pray for them. Pray that God by his gracious Holy Spirit will use the Word of God to convict them of sin and bring them to repentance and a living faith in the Messiah. Pray that they will find their hearts strangely warmed by the truth so beautifully portrayed. Pray that as the choir rises with full voice and sings,

“Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by His blood

To receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing,

Blessing and honour, glory and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb,

For ever and ever!”

Pray that God would show that worthiest of Lambs to every concert goer in the hall. They came for the high cultural experience. Pray that they would receive far more abundantly than anything they ever anticipated. Jesus himself, the Lamb upon his throne, ruling over all things—even pagan Seattle. Pray, believing God will use Handel’s setting of his own Word to show the Lord Jesus to everyone in attendance. And then rejoice and worship Christ, the Messiah! Yours and Handel’s Messiah!

Author of more than thirty-five books, Douglas Bond leads tours in Europe--Join me in France for the Battlefield Bond Tour, June 17-27,2026. Inquire today while space is still available. Early registration discount ending soon.

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