Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner.

We are in the middle of publishing a three-part series on George Friderick Handel's Messiah,

and I'm slipping into the feed today with a Messiah bonus episode.

Let me tell you how this one came about.

Over the past several years, as I have become addicted to this piece of music, I attended

several performances by the New York Philharmonic. The playbill for these performances reads

Handel's Messiah presented by Gary W. Parr. I got to wondering what it means for a performance

to be presented by a particular person, and I especially got to wondering who is Gary W. Parr, so I tracked

him down. It turns out that he used to be the chairman of the Philharmonics Board of Directors,

and he's still a member of the board, which officially makes him a patron of the arts. Not quite

the same kind of patron that King George II was to handle, but you get the

idea. The conversation you're about to hear between Gary Parr and myself goes in some interesting

directions. I'd ask our archivists how many years have we performed the Messiah. It's decades

upon decades. Just because we've done it and because it is a tradition is no reason to continue.

You should only continue if it's a good idea.

Is it a good idea for the Philharmonic to keep performing Messiah?

We'll find out and we'll find out a lot more.

Stay tuned for an interesting conversation with a really interesting human.

And we will be back very soon

with the finale to our Messiah series.

This is Freakonomics Radio, the podcast that explores the hidden side of everything, with your host, Stephen Dubner.

First of all, just say your name and what you do, if you don't mind.

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