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2024-06-15
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George Frideric Handel Morell Felicity Palmer James Bowman Philip Langridge Stephen Roberts Stephen Varcoe Richard Hickox 1553 1572 1588 1605 1642 1649 1685 1688 1742 1746 1747 1759 1829 1850 1976
GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL +••.••(...)) JUDAS MACCABAEUS (1747) Dr Thomas Morell’s libretto is based on the events of 165 BC recorded in the Book of Maccabees, when Judas ‘the hammerer’ led Jewish forces against the invading Seleucid king Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’. The Gideon-like Jewish hero won brilliant victories against numerically-superior forces. Fighting for their ‘liberties, religion and laws’, the Jews rid the nation of Greek-inspired paganism, hitherto welcomed by liberal sections within the nation. An assault on all things Jewish by Antiochus led to widespread cruel persecution. The godly, patriotic and aged Mattathias killed a compromising Jew who engaged in pagan sacrifice. He then called upon other loyalists to follow him and his five sons, John, Simon, Judas, Eleazar and Jonathan, to the mountains, from where a series of effective guerilla campaigns were launched. While the heroism of Judas is justly celebrated, his brother Eleazar’s suicidal exploit in piercing the under-belly of one of the enemy’s ‘tank regiment’ elephants is also remembered. The Methodist Revival was beginning to sweep across the nation when, five years after ‘MESSIAH’ (1742) - ‘the great ‘Evangelical Oratorio’, Handel produced this grand ‘Protestant patriotic Oratorio’. It was composed to celebrate the defeat of the ‘Stuart spear-head’ Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Catholic inspired, French-backed assault on the Hanoverian monarchy of the Protestant United Kingdom at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746. Besides pleasing the London Jewish community for appealing to one of their national heroes, it is easy to see how the events of 165 BC had parallels with British history. Fears of the tyrannical, cruel and idolatrous European Catholic threat stretched back to the Reformation martyrdoms of ‘bloody’ Mary’s reign +••.••(...)), the St Bartholomew French Huguenot massacre (1572), the Spanish Armada (1588), the Gunpowder Plot (1605) and the Catholic-inspired intrigue of the Stuart era - which precipitated our Civil War +••.••(...)) and the Puritan Commonwealth +••.••(...)). The Restoration continued to prove that Protestant anxieties were justified. Not until the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 and the accession of William & Mary was the UK’s Protestant establishment secure, augmented eventually by the Hanoverian dynasty. Not until 1829 did the British establishment consider it safe to relax its anti-Catholic agenda. That said, the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1850 was to show that anti-Protestant Catholic conspiracy was far from dead. The seemingly-secular events of the 20th century and the setting up of the EU were not as devoid of the old Catholic conspiracy to crush Protestant Britain as many would like to think. For all the defects of a materialistic BREXIT, campaigners should find the patriotism of the Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus a source of inspiration, not least because the German-born composer, chose an English identity! More importantly, breathing the same Judeo-Christian values of the ‘Evangelical Oratorio’, Handel’s ‘patriotic Oratorio’ is music for a nation under God. The question is: will we go for God or Mammon? Inspired by the authentic Christian Gospel of the ‘Messiah’, Handel’s ‘Sound an alarm!’ from ‘Judas Maccabaeus’ needs to be sounded more loudly than ever. Without heeding it, we will never recover our soul. Dr Alan C. Clifford. BBC broadcast from Wells Cathedral, as part of the 1976 Bath festival (2 June 1976) Felicity Palmer (soprano) Margaret Cable (mezzo-soprano) James Bowman (counter-tenor) Philip Langridge (tenor) Stephen Roberts (bass) Stephen Varcoe (bass-baritone) Boys of Wells Cathedral Choir Richard Hickox Singers and Orchestra Conductor: Richard Hickox Act 1: 1-26
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