Messyah
Paul Ayres's re-written version of Handel's Messiah



The composer/arranger says: "Each movement from Handel's oratorio that I have re-arranged is treated in a different way. Sometimes there are changes to metre and rhythm, and sometimes the harmony or text has undergone a transformation. Some movements have had their essential elements distilled into a few moments' intensity, and some musical ideas have been expanded and developed along startlingly tangential lines."
Asked whether this amounts to a 'PDQ Handel' send-up of one of classical music's best-loved works, he disagrees: "Messyah has been written because I have such a great love for Handel's music – not because I want to ridicule it. Certainly, there may be a few comic moments, but equally there are some thoughtful and considered responses to the text. Every 'straight' performance of Messiah is different - the sound of Sir Thomas Beecham's 1957 recording is worlds away from William Christie's of 1994, for example - and I would just say that Messyah is 'differenter' than most."

21 movements were premiered in May 2006 at St George's Church, Hanover Square (Handel's own parish church) to a packed audience athe London Handel festival fringe

and there is a live CD recording from this concert available, please click for information:
CD ordering information

Other movements have also been re-composed, and Paul hopes to have the entire oratorio re-written by 2009 (the 250th anniversary of Handel's death).

To hear some sample mp3 sound files, click on these links:

Amen
full ensemble

Hallelujah!
double choir unaccompanied

I know that my Redeemer liveth
solo voice, choir and band

Since by man came death
choir and ensemble

Surely He hath borne our griefs
choir and ensemble

The Lord gave the word
choir and percussion

Thy rebuke
string quartet


REVIEWS AND COMMENTS

"...the highlight was the finale, a dazzling version of Handel's I know that my Redeemer liveth. This started conventionally enough and the words remained unchanged. But the music, with the original tune elaborated, edited and enlarged, and tempos accelerated or slowed, ended up as an exhilarating hybrid. It was an amalgam of cantata, beat, hot gospel etc that left both performers and audience breathless."
[Iain Gilmour, reviewing a performance by Rosemary Forbes-Butler at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, on www.Edinburghguide.com, August 2003]

"After a brief moment of kidology that all was roughly as normal, 'I know that my Redeemer liveth' went gospel, crooned convincingly by tenor Tom Raskin with ravishing choral support. A show-stopper."
[Andrew Green, reviewing the 2006 performance of Messyah, in Early Music Today, June/July 2006]

"It's a work of sheer genius. Can't express enough admiration for it. It's tremendous to have musicians as visionary as you at work in this country."
[Kevin Bowyer, University of Glasgow]

"This is amazing, wonderful, completing surprising, drunk with cleverness, and brilliant. I love the way you take no prisoners."
[Rick Bjella, Appleton, WI, USA]

"It is wonderful - poised between heaven and Hoffnung! Sometimes batty and sometimes very moving... It's disconcertingly hard to know where you're coming from sometimes (maybe you are not always sure either) which is quite unsettling: one either likes that feeling or not..."
[John Hawkins, London]


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