Handel 2009
Interview with Donald Burrows
Conducted at Handel House Museum in 2005.
Donald Burrows (BA 1968; PGCE 1969; MA 1971; PhD 1981) studied History and Music at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and at the Open University. He has lectured in Music at the Open University since 1982, and was also Head of the Music Department from 1991 to 2002. His many publications on Handel include the book, 'Handel's Messiah' published by Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Do you have any early memories of Messiah?
I remember listening to a broadcast with my father when I would have been about six or seven, no, perhaps a bit older, possibly nine or ten, and, with the vocal score, following the parts in the choruses. And then I must have gone to a performance, probably when I was about fourteen or fifteen.
The complete performances I’ve done are not actually that numerous. I conducted a complete one in 1971 or 1972, but I’ve probably taken part in, one way or another, in quite a lot more than that, either as a singer or as a player.
Any favourites?
Yes, there were some performances that I sort of remember but in a way I think that these days the things you remember are the epoch-making recordings in the sixties: Charles Mackarras …Colin Davies and then Christopher Hogwood with the Academy of Ancient Music, which I think are real landmarks in the way that Messiah was performed.
Do you have a favourite recording or soloist?
No I don’t think so. I think most recordings have got a few things that you think are done better than other recordings so you would sort of mix it up. In many ways the three that I’ve mentioned have held up very well over the years but there have been excellent recordings by Andrew Parrot and Nick McGegan and Trevor Pinnock. One wouldn’t want to be without any of those.
Do you have a favourite part and why?
No I don’t think so. I see it as a continuous story in a way. You’ve got of course people who remember the Hallelujah Chorus or whatever. In a way, I think that it's not necessarily one of my favourite things but I always feel sorry if you go to a performance and they’ve cut the aria Thou art gone up on high. It’s very easy to cut but actually Handel wrote it several times and it’s a very good aria in at least two of the forms, so I always feel a bit sorry if it’s not there.
Do you have any thoughts on interpretations?
Well I think that Messiah is quite an unusual work in terms of how and when Handel performed it. So I think it’s always been something regarding matters of performance practice that makes it rather different from his other oratorios. Because you have to allow for both an interpretation that would match what he did at Covent Garden Theatre and probably a slightly different atmosphere in the Foundling Hospital chapel. So there’s quite a broad range of how things might work. And also the question of how dramatic you regard it as being, as a narrative oratorio, - you know told as a story. And I think how you treat this is quite interesting, to see the different ways that this happened, because you could either take the view that what he was doing was sort of merging the theatre tradition with, as it were the English anthem tradition in the choruses, and you treat that one way. Or you could say, well, actually most of his solo singers were actually theatre singers who had performed at the opera and would have treated it in a certain way because of the nature of what they did. So there’s quite a broad spectrum of possible ways of treating Messiah.
How do you feel about working in Handel’s own space?
I think it’s always quite remarkable to think that this is where he was sitting writing it, as we must assume, you know in August/September. I think there is always the sense of place and that is a good thing. I don’t think one should get too sentimental about it in a way, and there’s a lot we don’t know, you know - what he was thinking about the circumstances under which it would have been performed. But it always gives you a little shiver doing it in the place where it was written.
Handel House Museum at 25 Brook Street will be at the heart of the Handel celebrations this year. This landmark address is where Handel lived for thirty-six years of his life and where he died on 14 April 1759.