2025/051: Every Valley — Charles King

2025/051: Every Valley — Charles King

His music was inseparable from a cause as well as a moral sensibility: helping indigent children and knowing the deep tangibility of hope. After the London premiere of the Messiah in 1743, Handel is supposed to have told a noble patron, “My Lord … I should be sorry if I only entertained [an audience]; I wished to make them better.” [loc. 4459]

The American edition's subtitle, 'The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah', gives an idea of King's broad approach. Instead of focussing only on Handel, King examines the circumstances surrounding the composition of Messiah, and the broader social context into which it was born. He shows us that the Enlightenment was as much 'a period of profound anxiety about improving the world' as a glorious revolution of political, social, intellectual and cultural life.

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