657. Whose “Messiah” Is It Anyway?

Freakonomics Radio

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Documentary, Society & Culture

4.6 • 32K Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

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Summary

All sorts of people have put their mark on “Messiah,” and it has been a hit for nearly 300 years. How can a single piece of music thrive in so many settings? You could say it’s because Handel really knew how to write a banger. (Part three of “Making ‘Messiah.’”)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Jane Glover is an early music scholar and a prolific conductor.
0:10.8	I've conducted over 120 performances of Messiah, which I have loved since I was nine years old.
0:18.1	That first Messiah, she heard, was at Lincoln Cathedral in the East Midlands
0:22.7	of England. My grandparents lived there and we had a family Christmas and we were all taken to
0:27.7	Messiah and I was blown away by this piece. I can to this day remember everything about it.
0:36.1	What had really blown me away was not the huge stuff.
0:39.2	It wasn't actually Alleluia and Amen, though, of course they did.
0:42.6	It was actually the much more contemplative stuff.
0:44.8	The thing I wanted to come and bash out on the piano when we got home was, I know that my
0:49.7	redeemer live of.
0:50.4	I know that I redeem a liver.
1:04.7	Something rang a chord within me, and I couldn't really articulate it at the age of nine,
1:10.1	but I somehow knew instinctively that music was going to be important, and that Handel was going to be important to me.
1:13.7	Because whenever I encountered Handel, and certainly Messiah, it always felt natural and familiar
1:19.5	and this is what I should be doing.
1:23.3	Does the story still move you?
1:25.7	Of Messiah?
1:26.7	Absolutely.
1:27.8	Every time. Every time.
1:28.5	Every time.
1:32.6	Does Messiah move you the way it moves Jane Glover?
1:37.1	Maybe, maybe not.
	...

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