At my parent’s house, on Christmas, I was listening to a production of Handel’s oratorio, The Messiah. I’ve heard it many times, and been present at a number of live productions.
There’s a custom the the audience rises during the Hallelujah Chorus. The most common story for this custom is that at the London premiere of the oratorio, King George II was so moved he stood up, so everyone else had to as well. It’s good to be the king!
But I’ve heard other stories, some said he was just relieving a cramp in the leg. Some said he didn’t even do it, or that he wasn’t present, and that the whole tale is apocryphal, and the custom started later.
I offered to burn incense to Cecil if he would answer this question, but Cecil is busy. So now I’ll bake virtual cookies for Dopers who can help me out. How did the custom of rising during the Hallelujah Chorus get started?
Hi good people,
My music master at school told us that the reason the King stood up, at the end apparently, was that he thought that was the end of The Messiah and stood to applaud.
great piece of music BTW,
Peter
King George II was so moved by Handel’s work that he rose to show his appreciation. It’s possible, I suppose, but if this is true, it’s strange that he didn’t wait until the end of the piece.
King George II mis-counted the number of movements and stood up to a) stretch b) go off to the privy c) break wind.
It would be true that once the king stood up, everyone else present would have felt obliged to stand as well.
However,
from the Wiki article, which cites both Donald Burrows’ Handel and Richard Luckett’s Handel’s Messiah: a Celebration as a source.
But it’s a good story - se non è vero, è ben trovato.
BrotherCadfael, what is your rough location, that the audiences no longer stand? I’ve performed it at least 30 times; I sang my first Messiah in 1979 and my most recent one in 2010 - in Canada, they stand for the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus, then and now.
Saw it performed a few weeks ago in Tennessee and stand they did. We didn’t and got a few dirty looks, like we were farting in church.
This is bible country, so I don’t think they’re standing out of tradition, but more because they’re treating it as a religious service.
Never sang the complete Messiah, but sang the Hallelujah chorus as part of our Christmas “Cantata” two weeks ago, and the audience/congregation stood.
We also sang “And the Glory of the Lord” which people did not stand for.
I did have to laugh at the teenager who couldn’t believe that there might be people in the choir who hadn’t sung the Hallelujah Chorus before–I sang it for the first time in high school, and our director wanted to teach it to us so we’d have learned it properly once, which makes sense to me now (twenty years later), since we sang it through very quickly in rehearsal, checking elusive pitches and bargaining with the director about how much cueing he was going to do.
I’ve been singing in *Messiah *perfomances for 30 years and the audience has always stood for the Hallelujah chorus.
Aside from the tradition, I think they like to do it because it gives them a chance to stretch their legs. In Australia the usual practice is to have the interval at the end of of Part I. Without the post-Hallelujah stand, the audience would have to remain seated throughout Part II and Part III, which would be a long sit.
See, I’ve been in choirs all my life, and we never sang it. The religious pieces are always either esoteric or difficult, and often both. Most often, they were in Latin. The only songs we learned to have them learned were Christmas carols out of the hymnal.*
In secondary school, we also always kept sacred and secular songs as even as possible, erring on the side of sacred. All we needed was one parent to freak out because little Johnny had to sing a Christian song. Obscurity and using different languages seemed to help allay that fear.
*Oddly enough, no one ever feared a parent objecting to that. Perhaps because we only ever sang them when we would go out caroling, which was technically optional.