Charles Jennens: the man behind Handel's 'Messiah'

Charles Jennens has a claim to be Handel's
best, most innovative, most stimulating

collaborator.

He provided the texts for some of
Handel's greatest English works.

He is, of course, best-known as the librettist

of Messiah,

but he also collaborated with Handel
on three other oratorios: Saul, Belshazzar,

and

L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato.

Jennens' life was shaped by three

major passionate commitments:

to his religious faith as a Church of
England Protestant;

to his politics (he was a political
outsider);

and to music.

I think Jennens had an instinctive
understanding

of what Handel did best as a composer,

and he clearly was a Handel nut.

I mean, he

had the largest collection of Handel's
music in eighteenth-century England.

He's a man who

likes

the best

in literature.

I can tell also that politically
something interests him about

the nature of

kingship,

and what it is to be royal and challenged.

But more than that, I find it very difficult to say he must be therefore a

private man, I guess, because he didn't

shout about it.

He didn't write for money; he gave Handel the librettos as a gift.

He didn't write for glory.

All his librettos were anonymous.

In a rather extraordinary statement,

Jennens spoke of making use of Handel. The
idea of the librettist making use of the

composer rather than the other way around is
interesting. He saw Handel's music as the

perfect conduit

for his own ideas, both religious and
political.

Of course, Jennens is the collaborator

of Messiah, which is

without doubt, at least in the English-speaking world, the most famous oratorio of all time.

And for that reason, there is a legacy

which defines

oratorio into the next century.

There are always moments

in Messiah, and again, I do it so often,
but there's always something

of relevance to that moment when I sing 'Why do the nations rage

so furiously together?' There's always a
headline in the paper that morning of

another attack somewhere in the world.

You get the feeling that, rather than being an Old Testament text, that there's

no relevance today, that things are
happening right now.

Jennens was born into a family of
Birmingham iron masters,

but by the time Jennens was born, they were extremely wealthy, and Jennens' grandfather

had bought an estate at Gopsall. Jennens inherited this estate from his father

when he was in his forties.

Wealth allowed Jennens to have no
profession, but it's very fortunate for

us, because it means that he could devote
his life to patronage of the arts, which

he did on a grand scale. Right at the end
of his life, he embarked on one of his

most ambitious projects: a complete
edition of Shakespeare, the first-ever

annotated edition of Shakespeare, the
plays being published in individual

volumes with notes on the page, and that's
how modern Shakespeare editions

are produced,

but, in doing so, he got across
the current Shakespeare mafia in the form of

the leading editor George Steevens, who made sure that through his media contacts,

Jennens' reputation was completely
rubbish, and that survived long after

Jennens' death, often without any
awareness of his philanthropy, his work

for Handel,

his artistic patronage. History's always a little bit unkind on

librettists and it's always composers

who we

remember,

but it's fair to say, especially with Jennens,
that it was a real

collaboration

and one of the most interesting
relationships of the eighteenth

century.