The Messiah Handel, despite many snee iwas still & much harried man. His very success had brought enemies, chiefly aristocratic ones who, for some fancied slight or other, their level best to encompa: downfall. In their vindictiveness they refund to lend cheir support this eoncerts—and in those d jof support from the "quality very often calamitous—and even went the length of having his placards torn down in the streets Handel fought these and other des-cable machinations with powerful obstinacy. But optimistic youth, which preserves an ever-smiling front to the buffets of an antagon-Istic world, was no longer his. Only his wonted strength of will remain-fed, "And so we find him, at middle lage, much overworked ina struggle!
keep alive a shaky Italian opera, exerting a prodigious vitality in the Jwriting of new works, near to the of capitulation. But at that very hour, when the grand old com-[poser appeared vanquished, he wrote work which was destined to establish immortality. That work!
"The Messiah." For nearly two} turies this pompous, grandiose, mighty oratorio has steadily grown i favour. become with the much an institu-Gilbert and Sullivan opera, Its performance is a musical bordering on the religious.
Remarkable that this music of day when the first of the Georges sat on a turbulent throne, when Pope and Swift and John Gay trod the earth, should still enjoy such favour? Curious, indeed, that this music of a bygone age' when the women curtseyed and simpered in monstrous} hooped skirts, when the men swore and strutted in wig and sword, when 'London town was a rabbit-warren of ferooked thoroughfares and awry houses, and the romantic horse-drawn' stage held sway over badly made and footpad-infested roads, should still appea} in these wonder But so it] our famous or infamous, (as you will), conservatism which prefers to sup on the simple fare of Bach and Handel rather than attempt the lesser known conserves of Bartok and Strawinsky!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.