I remember my mother waking me and tugging me up off the floor to stand with 5600 other people at the Sydney Opera House. Bedtime had come and gone, but I shuffled to my feet. Wow! The sound of the choir and the orchestra struck me. “Hallelujah! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!” Messiah composer George Frideric Handel said of writing the “Hallelujah” chorus, “I did think I did see all heaven before me, and the great God himself.” But not everyone agreed. What happened after controversial and wealthy theologian Charles Jennens commissioned the story of Jesus in the new oratorio style?

Read more at the source: The justice of the Jesus story in song

Article excerpt posted on en.intercer.net from News.