To my Readers who Love Classical Music
To My Readers Who Love Classical Music
A writer writes--and she wonders what her readers think. Well, here are four responses to my piece about Handel's Messiah that were sent to me privately. Dearest People: Please post your very valuable thoughts publicly, right here at Substack Others would also enjoy them. Your views, enthusiasm, and knowledge bases are worthy of sharing.
1) Ahh…the Messiah. Absolutely some of the most beautiful, inspiring and uplifting music ever. I don’t listen to it until Xmas time, and then I listen to it over and over for a week or so, with the 6 different recordings I have (favorites: McCreesh, and then Pinnock), as well as all the versions I can get on Idagio (do you know about Idagio? Great streaming classical music, for only about $15/month, with new releases, all kinds of playlists, etc.). I sang some of it in High School Chorus, and even conducted it once in a school assembly.
Do you know about Handel’s more strictly Jewish oratorios? Judas Maccabeus for Hanukah, and Israel in Egypt for Pesach. The Protestants in parts of Western Europe took the Hebrew Bible quite seriously for a few centuries, as an escape from the Catholic Church and claiming the primacy of the Bible over the church. Harvard has some Hebrew on its seal, and Kierkegaard, to graduate from High School, besides Latin and Greek, had to translate some of Genesis into Danish. (High School was a little tougher back then!). In my heyday of being invited to churches to give guest sermons on religion and the environment, I was always surprised when they used parts of the Torah or psalms or prophets as prayers.
2) Beautiful researching Phyllis! It’s like you to catch the distortion (here embedded in Christian theology since the latter part of the 1st century C.E.) and correct it!
Re your question: although there were some among early Christian thinkers who did advocate dropping the Jewish connection altogether (and Christianity did all it could to discredit the Jews and pretend that their place with God had been transferred to the Christian movement lock, stock & barrel) actually the disconnect could not be effected without Christianity losing its claim to be a religion grounded in history. Without that historical connection, Christianity would have floated skyward and turned into one more gnostic sect, of which the ancient world had many. Also without the claim to havesuperseded Judaism while conveniently incorporating its Bible, Christianity would have lost its title to the antiquity enjoyed by Judaism. The ancient world respected antiquity more than modernity, the old more than the new.
3) So glad you heard this and loved it….now you should check out Handel operas! There are dozens! All gorgeous. Or get a CD of Cecilia Bartoli and Bryn Terfel who have recorded many opera excerpts. She is the best singer of baroque….unmatched. Next year go to the Trinity Church Messiah, IMHO the best performance and best singers. Until the last few years I never missed it.
Also there is an amazing new British CD of Messiah that is nothing like the performances of other groups.I was bowled over. (You can get the streaming of Trinity’s Messiah on line anytime).You can find performances of Handel (and everyone else) on the internet. Most are free. And you can rent from the Met!.. Their Agrippina is astounding…..one of his best…but Theodora is probably his masterpiece. Sadly I can no longer go out alone and I have no one interested in opera. You would be amazed how much music you can pull up on the internet! It keeps me breathing.
Loved this! Also...ask your Christian friends: if Jesus were to show up at a dinner in his honor on Christmas, and the main course was Christmas ham, what would they serve him?
The late paleontologist Stephen J. Gould used to sing with a chorus here in Boston, but refused to sing Bach’s St. John Passion. The vilification of Jews in that gospel was unbearable. The Lutheranism of Bach’s day would not have seen a problem.
I take you at your word! But please forgive me if this is not the place and feel free to remove my comment if it is out of place. What little knowledge I have is offered in good faith and I do not wish to suggest that people on any side of this discussion are acting in bad faith.
Regarding comment 1: Christians from the beginning have regarded the Hebrew Scriptures to be all about Jesus so it is no surprise that they are used in public worship; among professed religious, the psalms are prayed seven times a day. The Church (Orthodox, Catholic, Syriac etc.) preserved more of the Hebrew scriptures than the later Rabbinic Jews did which is why there are more books in what is often called the Christian 'Old Testament' and the the Jewish Tanakh. Not surprisingly, the Church were keen to preserve scriptures outside the Torah and major prophets which strongly point to Jesus being the Messiah whereas the Rabbis, again not surprisingly, were less keen to do so. I do believe it is possible for both groups to be acting in good faith. Remember, at the time of the Second Temple (Jesus' time) there was no one single book of the Bible as we know today but collections of many scrolls from the prophets with no fixed canon so to speak.
Regarding comment 2: I would argue that those in the first century were acting in good faith. Many Jewish scholars accept that what some refer to as Christian 'distortions' are, in fact, preservations of different strands of ancient Jewish belief.
Regarding comment 4: Ham? As a main course? It has to be goose, surely? The idea of food being unclean was indeed something discussed from the beginning of the Church. Ultimately, the Church decided to follow Jesus' teaching about what comes out of the heart making a person clean or unclean rather than the food they eat. So a Christian should be able to offer non-kosher food. Of course that is an answer from the Christian paradigm and you may not believe it but I hope you will accept my comments with a patient and generous spirit!
As I say, there are many accessible books on the fascinating subject of Second-Temple Judaism by both Jewish and Christian scholars (Neusner, Boyarin, etc.) and they do it far more justice than I ever could. God bless.