On the eve of Advent Sunday I attended Handel’s Messiah performed by the brilliant Schola Cantorum of London’s Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School.
A professional baroque orchestra was the worthy complement to the accomplished choir, yet the soloists were not professionals but boys from the choir. Many are highly gifted musicians. Some of the older ones are already marked for Oxbridge choral scholarships. But naturally their voices do not have the maturity of adults’.
This proved to be a real blessing, for the boys also lack any trace of self-awareness or histrionics that professional soloists can bring to the best-known arias in the oratorio, such as “Ev’ry valley” and “He was despised”. As a result, the scriptural text emerged with a freshness of expression. It was being declared rather than performed, and Handel’s music truly became the servant of the words.
