In honor of Handel’s anniversary year in 2009, German conductor Helmuth Rilling commissioned Swedish composer Sven-David Sandström to create a new oratorio using the full text of Messiah, by Charles Jennens. Sandström’s description of the work as an old-fashioned slideshow has been used as a means to analyze the music as a series of musical-dramatic pictures. Written by a member of the Festivalensemble Stuttgart during the European premiere performances of the work, the study also includes insights and suggestions to future conductors, as well as a list of score errata and suggestions for further reading. Hopefully his twenty-first century Messiah, a masterwork of our time, will continue to be presented to audiences all over the world.
(“Scholarly Abstractions” is a feature highlighting brief abstracts from recent graduate projects in choral music. To share your thesis abstract, contact Scott Dorsey at )
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