Music that makes you want to live

Algis Valiunas in The Weekly Standard on music that makes you want to live:

But it is of course Messiah that remains Handel's nonpareil work. Here the secular and the sacred are joined, as Handel constructs a monument to everlasting truth on a pedestal of familiar, worldly beauty. In Handel's sound-world, biblical grandeur requires an admixture of joyous levity to portray fully the surpassing love of the God who suffered and died for human salvation. Some of the music is unmistakably churchly, based on the hymn rather than the dance or operatic aria: The bass recitatives and airs have all the majesty of prophetic utterance whose solemnity is amplified as only music can do. But the melody of the alto air He was despised could almost be set to a lament for lost love from Alcina or Rodelinda. Similarly, a chorus such as For unto us a child is born has the ebullient lightness of a pastoral dance from an Italian opera, though it will swell into hieratic magnificence. It is fitting that this oratorio has become the consummate Christmas musical staple: It exemplifies the community at glad-hearted worship, in a world that fulfills its spiritual needs.

And this community of souls extends well beyond the Christian flock. In Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow's hero, an American millionaire trying to heal his spiritual desolation with a journey into the African wild, is greeted warmly by the isolated Arnewi tribe. Anticipating revelation and renewal, Henderson is moved to sing to the Arnewi from Messiah: He was despised and But who may abide the day of His coming. Taking in the music, Willatale, the old queen of the tribe, the woman of Bittahness, says to him, "Grun-tu-molani." Henderson cannot wait to understand what she is saying, and the translator explains, "Say, you want to live. Grun-tu-molani. Man want to live."

That is what Handel's music does: It makes you want to live. There is no greater gift an artist can give his audience.