Long Journey to Messiah by George Frideric Handel

The choir and orchestra that I have shared with you in the video are not us, I do not yet have recordings available to share with you, but this is the music that we have been presenting in gala concerts since Thursday and we will culminate tomorrow, Sunday, with our Christmas musical season. I entered this institution in my hometown in 2009 and this work was the first to catch my attention, I heard it to the symphonic choir of my state and I saw them with great admiration, I wanted to sing it too, and today, after 14 years I have the honor of being part of a great version of this oratorio composed by George Frederic Handel in 1741.

It is practically a tradition for us to rehearse the most popular and Christmas numbers of this oratorio every year, but for some strange reason we never get to perform it in its entirety. In my first concert in the Youth Choir of Aragua we only sang the Hallelujah, the Symphonic Choir did sing other numbers, but I was very far from joining the symphonic choir at that time. The year I moved to Caracas, which was 2013, it was done in my city a little more complete, at least the Christmas part where the annunciation and the birth of Jesus is narrated. They did it right after I moved, so I was left out again.

Here in Caracas for me it has been one failed attempt after another, and I got to know a little more of this work in my singing lessons, as I had to study two arias in the process when I was converting from baritone to tenor. Not at all easy to sing and even less easy to learn, this music is very elegant and perfect from the baroque era. What strikes me most are the melismas in the phrases, that is not easy to do at all and much less in large choirs. I have seen several choirs perform the Messiah, but there are always 5 or 6 singers per string, we only tenors are 27, so to square those melismas and imitate the baroque sound for a choir that always sings Beethoven or Mahler is a challenge.

Regarding the Hallelujah... It has become a key musical work for our musical institution. In fact it is exciting to see from the stage the audience when the instrumentation began to sound, everyone sits up straight, others take out their cell phones to record, others comment with those on the side and others simply smile with emotion, because they know they are witnessing powerful and popular music worldwide, it will always be a luxury to enjoy the Hallelujah live. I am singing it for the first time as a tenor and I don't know it by heart, in fact I don't like that line very much, I have fallen in love with the baritone line, which I learned more than 10 years ago and which is easy to sing, but life is about challenges, so I proudly sing this beautiful music to exalt God.