#19 Handel's Messiah

Recipe for ragout with poor Irish children: The mighty dean and writer, Jonathan Swift was close to putting a stop to the premiere of Messiah. Under no circumstances would he let his choir singers perform in a ‘fiddle players’ club in Fishamble Street’. One would have thought that Jonathan Swift in particular would appreciate a concert that was to raise money for the release of imprisoned debtors who were starving. Because Jonathan Swift himself had previously highlighted the shocking poverty in which the majority of Catholics in the country were living with his pamflet, ‘A Modest Proposal For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or the Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public.´
Music: Dunedin Consort ‘Handel’s Original Dublin Version 1742’

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to the nineteenth episode of Handel's Messiah, a
podcast at Van Calendar. Despite Handle being enormously successful in Dublin,

(00:43):
not everybody in the city was impressed by the presence
of the great German composer. One of them was just
as mighty dean and writer Jonathan Swift, and he was
close to putting a stop to the premiere of Messiah.
Under no circumstances would he let his choir singers perform

(01:04):
in a fiddle player's club in Fishampel Street. One would
have thought that Jonathan Swift in particular would appreciate a
concert that was to raise money for the release of
imprisoned debtors who were starving in the overcrowded prisons in
the city because of the famine in the country. Jonathan
Swift himself had previously highlighted the shocking poverty in which

(01:28):
the majority of Catholics in the country were living. In
seventeen twenty nine, he published a seethingly sarcastic essay on
the British supremacy in Ireland, a modest proposal for preventing
the children of poor people in Ireland from being a
burden to their parents or the country and from making

(01:50):
them beneficial to the public. In his essay, Jonathan Swift
suggests that the Irish poor slaughter their children when they
are about one year old and sell them as food
for rich people, and that way the Irish children would
be of value rather than a burden to their poor
parents and the British landowners. Swift provides a long list

(02:13):
of ways to cook children. They can be stewed, roasted, baked,
and boiled and served in a ragout. And as he writes,
killing and eating Irish children will also carry the great
advantage that it would greatly reduce the number of Catholics
a modest proposal is probably one of the most powerful

(02:36):
essays against British colonialism ever ridden. It didn't really make
Jonathan Swift popular among his own that would be the
Anglo Irish Protestants, but the poor Catholics in Dublin loved him,
particularly because Swift's pamphlet Ridden under the name Drapier, had

(02:56):
previously put a stop to the introduction of Wood's halfpence,
where the British had authorised a British manufacturer to mint
coins for Ireland instead of the Irish government. His popularity
among Catholics could for instance, be seen in the numerous
pops whose name included the name Drapier. Songs and odes

(03:19):
were written for the social critic who fought for the
poor and ordinary Catholics. When Handel arrived in Dublin, Jonathan
Swift was a sick and weakened man. However, his temper
was as fiery as ever, so on the twenty eighth
of January, Swift declared that his choir singers were definitely

(03:40):
not going to perform in a fittlers club in Fishamble Street. Granted,
he had actually given his permission the day before this
outburst of anger, but he had forgotten all about it. Consequently,
the clergy in Dublin decided that Swift was probably no
longer suited to be the absolute master of Saint Patrick's,

(04:02):
which he was so fond of calling himself. It is
quite ironic that it was Jonathan Swift who could have
stopped Messiah from premiering in Dublin, because in his younger years,
the very same Swift had been working ambitiously and determinedly
towards raising the standards of choir singing in his cathedral.

(04:24):
So if Swift hadn't worked so hard to gather the
best choir singers, Handler would not have been able to
put together choir in Dublin. He that's twelveth in Heaven
shall laugh them to scorn, shall have them indurationion. I'll
shut break them with a lot of iron. Thou shot

(04:48):
dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel. Assass