Re: J. Mac.

[Alex Lubet <lubet001...>]

Whoa!  Who ever said the message of Messiah wasn't overtly Christian?  Of 
course it is, and for those who believe that Christian prophecy is imbedded 
in Tanach, using only Tanach texts can be a way of making a Christian 
point.  There were a number of Protestant movements in Britain and the 
colonies that identified strongly with the Israelites.

It's my understanding that a Jewish or OT theme was regarded as a criterion 
for classification as an oratorio and that the Ode thus doesn't qualify 
(and for other reasons as well).  I think the reason for the emergence of 
the oratorio as a genre owed much to fascination with the ancient 
Israelites among Christians who barely if at all associated them with 
contemporaneous European Jewry.  I'm not an expert on British Jewry of the 
era, but I'd be pretty surprised if there was much interest in Western art 
music at all or much of the kind of assimilation that would be required for 
such interest.  Jewish involvement would, with a very few exceptions like 
Rossi, have to wait for Haskalah/Enlightenment later in the century, at 
which point interest absolutely blossomed.



At 11:51 AM 12/16/2003 -0600, you wrote:

>The purpose of a ListServ is discussion, so I shouldn't worry about being 
>corrected on a few points.  If my point was mis-stated about percentages 
>of  Handel oratorios on Jewish subjects, I can stick with the general 
>thought that only 2 from the list provided - Messiah and Ode to St. 
>Cecilia - are on uniquely Christian topics, while 5 times that number are 
>on topics of Jewish interest.  Can anyone substantiate or contradict the 
>story about Handel seeking out Jewish audiences?  Apparently these 
>oratorios were performed in runs of numerous performances, much like a 
>Broadway show of 200 or more years later.  Has anyone here ever heard some 
>of the more obscure titles?
>
>And the discussion of the exact sources of the texts can be 
>misleading.  Much of all of Messiah may be drawn from Tanach, but the 
>doctrinal message is clearly Christian.  In the case of Judas Maccabeus, 
>the text is by a Rev. Dr. Morrell, and is very 18th-century British, 
>whether a translation or paraphrase of older texts or not.
>
>Fred Blumenthal
>xd2fabl (at) us(dot)ibm(dot)com

Alex Lubet, Ph. D.
Morse Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Music
Adjunct Professor of American and Jewish Studies
University of Minnesota
100 Ferguson Hall
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612 624-7840 (o)
612 699-1097 (h)
612 624-8001  ATTN:  Alex Lubet (FAX)

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