The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1897-12-18
CHRISTMAS MUSIC.
Appropriate Compositions
With Which to Celebrate
Christs Birth.
SUGGESTIONS FOR DIRECTORS
Need Of a New oratorio-popularity
Of the Messiah Among the
Churches.
SUGGESTIONS FOR DIRECTORS

We have a vast deaf of music at Christ
mas-tide, and we cannot have too much
at the joyous festival. Only a Easter are
the church choirs in such fine practice
and thrown into so fine a pother, the
choir master so anxious and autocratic.
Up in the many Early English and other
sorts OF steeples sweet bells are tangled in
tune and out of tune as they are not set
agoing even in Casters s-pring-warned
air. But all this suitable singing and
timely playing on everything from a
cabinet organ to a carlton reminds us
each year more decidedly of a lack. We
need a Christmas oratorio. We have none.
We have one imperfect, dearly beloved,
and far from happy substitute. Each
Christmas finds Handel's 'sThe Messiah"
brought forward, like a last years bal
ance. Duly and laboriously is that ancient
work presented. 1t is strong in the affec-
tons of thousands of musical people, and
a firm foundation is under it in the senti-
ment of tens of thousands of people who
never SO to any other concert in the
whole t~welvemonth. Owners of ears that
eannot tell the Prize Song in Wagner's
'Mas~tersingers'' from the "Marseillaise'
consider it the finest and most spiritual
musical work ever composed, says "Har-
per's Weekly
Really it is curious that even the fringe
OF self-satisfied philistia will not be a
little more retrospective as to "The
Messiah"-to say nothing of s~uch,nnusical
auditors as ought TO know and to feel.
THE Messiah is not particularly an ora
torio for Christmast. It's references to the
Advent are in passing. 1t is really a work
Gnifa aS m11ah for Passion Weak for
Good Friday; perhaps ever more SO. 1t
was not composed as a specifically Christ
mas-time English oratorio, nor speedily
became quasi such a thing. 1t does duty,
therefore, as a venerable old makeshift.
Its text is selemnly and nobly Biblical,
but it is full of Handel perfectly secular
o~ratorio in much. "The Messiah indeed,
jigs and MARBLES and countermarcheS
along, full Of Handelian formalisms and of
ernpIy and old-faShioned musical orna-
ment, as if the subject were quite of the
world worldly. Its really lofty and sacred
sounding episodes do not redeem its man
ner OF musical utterance. Thu Birth in
Bethlehem and the Shepherds are soon
left behind, and thenceforward it pursues
as topics q Passionistic course, and casts
dogmas and theology into rhythms and
p~art-Wrlting. No, We cannot much longer
accept The Messiah as a substitute for
a true Christmas oratorio, and we need
one badly. MendelSSOhn doubtless could
have written exactly the desired Christ
mas article, but the author of Elijah
did not live to do so. Perhaps we shall
have it from one of our own American
composers. There are at least two or three
from whose recent work in the oratorio
field We might look for a strong effort
to supply the long continued lack. In
France, Cesar Franck's remarkable
Christmas-tide score is taking a high
place; and there are other aspiring mod
ern compositions for the occasion tina
should be better known here than they
seem to be. But the Continental composer
is not to the manner born when it comes
to English oratorio, as we wish it. The
contemporary British musician is duly
correct at it. Meantime THE Messiah
has its usual free course and Qualification,
sung at the hallowed and gracious time to
the most unmusical audiences of the year,
who flock to it and sit through it under
a musical misrepresentation. That error
Will only be broken by a new, really beau
tiful and lofty oratorio on the most beau
tiful and lofty central theme open to a
contemporary musicians heart and hand.
W ~