How Handel Got His Mojo Back

When he wrote “Messiah” (in 24 days), George Frideric Handel was past his prime and nearly broke. One night in Dublin changed all that.

To kick off our Freakonomics Radio series on Handel’s Messiah, we visited Dublin, the unlikely site of the oratorio’s first performance. I say “unlikely” because Handel lived in London, the capital of the music world; Dublin was far away, and relatively provincial. And Handel was a longtime superstar, hugely popular as both composer and performer, with a royal patronage on the side. So why did he decide to go all the way to Dublin to put on a series of concerts? Well, because they asked — and, importantly, they offered to pay. The Irish would cover all his expenses, and Handel would get a cut of the ticket sales.

But why did a superstar have to make that journey just for the money? To answer that, we spoke with Ellen Harris, author of George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends, who may know more than anyone alive about Handel’s financial life.

I did have a colleague early on say to me, Why are you spending so much time at the Bank of England? And why aren’t you looking at the music? And I said, well, have you ever heard: follow the money? Essentially, if we really understood Handel’s finances, you would understand much more about his life and work.

Handel spent years producing opera in London, with the Royal Academy of Music; his main patron was the king. But opera is exceedingly expensive to produce — all those sets, and costumes, and singers! — and it got even more expensive when a rival company forced Handel to compete for very expensive (and temperamental) Italian singers. Ellen Harris has detailed how this took a financial toll on Handel:

He was not able to build up any kind of cash fund for himself. During the early years of the Royal Academy, he was receiving into his annuities account at the Bank of England approximately £700 a year [around $165,000 today]. But in 1732, suddenly, he sold all of the annuity account. Over the next years, he kept withdrawing money, year after year, until in 1738, he had £50 left. He withdrew that, and he had nothing.

So that was Handel’s situation when he was invited to Dublin to put on a series of concerts. And that’s when he composed Messiah, in 24 days (typical for him) — to have something new to perform on what would otherwise have been “a greatest hits tour,” in the words of Charles King, a political scientist at Georgetown and author of Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah.

In Dublin, there was great excitement over a new Handel composition. There was so much demand for tickets, and so little space inside the music hall, that ladies were asked to arrive without the hoops in their skirts, and men without their swords. So how was the debut received? Here’s how King puts it in Every Valley: “The public reaction to … Messiah was astonishment and wonder.”

It would be hard to overstate just how valuable that trip to Dublin turned out to be for Handel. When he came back to London, he opened a new account with £1,600. He paid off all his bills, moved the rest of his money into annuity accounts, and never wrote another opera. And the piece that he introduced in Dublin is still played, every year, all over the world, including in New York City, where I live.

As we were finishing up this series, I went to Lincoln Center to hear Dame Jane Glover conduct Messiah with the New York Philharmonic. In fact, I went three times — two performances, and one rehearsal. I also managed to slip in one more Messiah, down at Saint Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue. I arrived late, and the only seat I could find was toward the back, behind a massive stone column. I couldn’t see a single performer. So … I just listened. I listened to the violin choruses that sprung from Handel’s mind nearly 300 years ago. Every now and again, I felt the rumble of a subway train passing by underneath the church. I loved the contradiction — the new, the old; the crooked straight, the rough places plain. I’m not sure how to summarize my relationship with this piece of music. Yes, I find it beautiful and moving. But it’s more than that. It feels like walking through a door to a world of possibility, even in the face of darkness and despair. Especially in the face of darkness and despair.

If you haven’t yet heard all three parts of our Freakonomics Radio series on Handel’s Messiah, I hope you’ll give them a listen over this holiday season, whatever holiday you may celebrate, including none at all. We’ll be back soon. Until then, take care of yourself — and, if you can, someone else too.

You can hear this week’s episode of Freakonomics Radio, “Whose Messiah Is It Anyway?”, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. A full transcript is available on our website.

Also on the Freakonomics Radio Network this week

Steve Levitt Says Goodbye to People I (Mostly) Admire

In the last episode of the podcast, Stephen Dubner turns the microphone on Steve Levitt. They talk about Levitt’s favorite — and least favorite — moments from the show’s five-year run, his quest to reform education, and his next podcasting gig.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | transcript

The Economics of Everyday Things: Christmas Lights

Would you pay a professional $2,500 or more to put up your holiday lights? Zachary Crockett is walking in a winter wonderland.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | transcript