The first time I heard the 48 hallelujahs, it was a dark and stormy night, as Edward Bulwer-Lytton famously said — 1960 in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, at War Memorial Auditorium. The 48 were in Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” but it seemed like more, 100 or 200 maybe. I can’t remember.
Rain came down in sheets on Richland Avenue at the old Welch College campus. Winter lightning flashed. I was wearing my sister Grace’s brown mouton coat and black three-inch high heels. Dr. Mary Ruth Wisehart was the driver, but her blue headstrong Henry J. car would not start. My friend and I jumped out into the storm to push. Dr. Wisehart popped the clutch, the Henry J. coughed, bucked, and got going. So, we chugged into downtown Nashville to hear Handel’s Messiah.
My friend and I were squeezed into the tiny back seat of the willful Henry J. when she sniffed and held her nose.
“I smell a wet dog!”
“Shhhh! It’s me,” I whispered, and pointed to my sister’s mouton coat.
I loved Grace’s brown mouton — a luxurious garment of lambskin straightened, chemically treated, and thermally set to be water-repellant and look like beaver or seal fur, or so they said. I had no clue what beaver or seal fur looked like. No matter, I loved that mouton coat. But that night, it repelled all right, but not water. As my friend said, it stunk like a wet dog.
The mouton coat was one of Grace’s few luxuries she lent me, along with big clip-on costume-jewelry earrings. She also had a real leather purse her husband John bought her. She didn’t lend me that, but I had the mouton and big earrings for the weekend. That was how Grace was, gracious like her name, always giving or lending. A good sister who took care of her wet-behind-the-ears naive sister who didn’t know how to stay in out of the rain when wearing mouton.
Forty minutes later, we four — Dr. Wisehart, her teaching colleague, my friend, and I — wedged ourselves into hardwood balcony seats. Thirty or so horns, strings, percussions, and a grand piano warmed up on stage. The chorus and soloists filed in. The conductor bowed, raised his arms, and the grave-sounding Overture to Handel’s Messiah began.
The instruments transported me. Pianos I knew — at least old upright ones like the ones I played at home and church. But this was a grand piano and a full orchestra: strings, woodwinds, brass, organ, bells, kettledrums. They raised me to highs of exaltation.
Two hours later came joy upon joy, the “Hallelujah Chorus.” Scores of hallelujahs in all parts — soprano, alto, tenor, bass — repeated over, under, and between the other voices. Again and again. Glorious four-part harmonies like a grand hymn, then single, unison hallelujahs, and finally multiple melody lines with 40 voices bursting out in a glorious jumble of repeated hallelujahs from all four parts. My spirit soared. My soul grew wings. It seemed as if heavenly saints and angels sang of Christ’s resurrection, ascension, and his reigning power: “Forever and ever. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hal-le-lu-jah!”
Applause was thunderous. Tears streamed down my face, running black with mascara. I blotted with my handkerchief.
That night more than 60 years ago, I was enthralled. The Messiah was the most beautiful sacred composition I had ever heard. The program gave German-born George Frideric Handel the credit for the astounding oratorio, composed in just 24 days in the year 1741.
Much later I learned that, yes, Handel composed the musical score and set the words in their place. But Handel did not write the Hallelujahs or the other 1,800 words of the Messiah. The hallelujahs that made my soul sprout wings in 1960 were penned by Charles Jennens.
My old 245-page copy of the Messiah never acknowledges Charles Jennens as the librettist — not in the three-page introduction by Max Spickler written in 1912, nor in the four-page compilation of the libretto that precedes the musical score. But Jennens’ words in the Messiah are 53 Bible passages drawn directly from seven Old Testament and seven New Testament books — a “Scripture collection,” as Jennens described his libretto.
Handel liked the dramatic arc of Jennens’ libretto so much he started at the beginning of Jennens’ Scripture passages and worked consecutively through them. The words of the Messiah begin where Jennens began, with the prophetic “comfort ye, comfort ye my people” from Isaiah 40 and continue through Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection, and end-time reign “for ever and ever. Amen.” The narrative arc belonged to Jennens, the musical score to Handel. The duo deserve double billing.
Handel and Jennens were lifelong friends. Before the Messiah, Jennens wrote at least three other librettos for Handel. A wealthy Christian bachelor, country squire, art collector, and musician, Jennens quibbled with Handel more than once over certain elements of the Messiah. It is said he sent Handel several revisions made directly on Handel’s autograph score. (Of course, it is also said that Handel mostly ignored the suggestions.)
Jennens’ harshest complaints were voiced by letter to another friend, Edward Holdsworth, where he grumbled Handel’s oratorio contained a few “grossest faults.” Eventually, I am told, Handel did a few touch-up revisions.
In the balcony, December 1960, I heard no faults. For two hours, as Grace’s mouton coat dried and lost its wet-dog smell, I was swept up into Jennens’ Scripture and Handel’s musical score.
Not knowing why, when the hallelujahs began in the “Hallelujah Chorus,” I stood with thousands of other concert goers. By its end, I supposed we stood in praise of the Omnipotent One who “shall reign for ever and ever….Hal-le-lu-jah!”
Later, I learned the standing began in London in 1743 with British King George II. At least that’s the legend.
Hallelujah! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.
The kingdom of this world is become
the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ:
and he shall reign for ever and ever
King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, Hallelujah!
Since that December 1960 in Grace’s mouton coat, I’ve heard the Messiah many times — live concerts; on record, cassette tapes, and CD; and on British radio. I’ve even sung in the Messiah once or twice. Every time, Scripture and music co-mingle in glorious praise and honor of our Savior.
But too often, in the hurry-and-scurry of December and approaching Christmas celebrations, I bypass the Messiah, even the hallelujahs. Busyness takes precedence. Decorating a tree, a house, a yard. Sending dozens of greeting cards — though, thankfully, we no longer must lick stamps. Buying gifts, wrapping, bagging, and tagging them. Cooking — hours, days, even weeks of culinary concoctions. All must be perfect. And, so, the 48 hallelujahs are pushed aside and forgotten.
Too many Decembers, I stumble along and swerve away from joy and praise. Today, I shudder at that failure, that preoccupation with the trivial, the superficial, the artificial. The unnecessary.
I shudder and bury my face in Jesus’ shoulder, my Messiah’s shoulder. I grieve and repent that I’ve neglected the hallelujahs. That I’ve forgotten the 53 Old and New Testament Scriptures in Jennens’ libretto and Handel’s score that first raised joy and hope and grief all jumbled together in my soul 64 years ago. There in the balcony of War Memorial Auditorium in my sister’s mouton coat, black tears streaming down — that time when I first wept and stood, both empty and full, before the Lord because of those 48 hallelujahs.
Lord, this December, help me not to neglect praise. Not sit, stumble, swerve, or forget that first time, that first place where I met you in the hallelujahs. Remind me. Take me back, Lord, this December, take me back to the emptiness and fullness of all those hallelujahs. Amen and amen.
About the Writer: Brenda Evans lives and writes along Rockhouse
Fork, a creek in Ashland, Kentucky. You may email Brenda at:
beejayevans@windstream.net.
