Handel 2009

Messiah Memory Bank 2005

Early Memories

‘Well, you could say I was brought up with it.  Among my earliest memories is my mother going around doing her housework whilst singing 'Hallelujah,' 'Rejoice Greatly' and 'His Yoke is Easy'. 
Miss JM Holt

‘I was in my grandmother’s kitchen and I was nine yeas old and it was on the radio, and that’s the first time I ever heard it. I was evacuated up to the north of England and I’m not sure whether I heard the whole thing because I was only little. It made such an enormous impression on me that I’ve loved Handel’s music ever since.’
Hazel Allport, Handel House Museum Volunteer
 
‘I was sixteen and I sang with a choir of 250 singers, and it was the first time I ever managed to get through the Amen chorus without getting lost.’
Joan Tag, Member of Wimbledon Choral Society

‘I first heard Messiah when I was a student in Manchester. A whole gang of us went to Belle Vue and sat in the cheapest seats high at the back.  We could hear the zoo animals (monkeys!) through the wall.  At the end we waited, breathlessly for Sir john Barbirolli’s autograph. “How was it?” we asked.  He replied, “Oh, it’s a long slog.”' 
Pauline Ferry, College lecturer

‘I would rank the experience of singing the Messiah at the very top of my childhood joys.  I cannot listen to or sing any part of it now without the very same lifting of the heart that I felt during those Christmas performances so long ago.’ 
Betty Rosen, Crouch End Festival Chorus member

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.