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Music

Is Handel’s Messiah anti-Semitic?

Baroque scholar Michael Marissen thinks so, but Damian Thompson doesn’t buy it

19 July 2014

9:00 AM

19 July 2014

9:00 AM

The Hallelujah Chorus crops up in the most unexpected places, says Michael Marissen in his new book about Handel’s Messiah. For example, it’s used in a TV ad ‘depicting frantic bears’ ecstatic relief in chancing upon Charmin toilet paper in the woods’.

That’s an amusing detail: it lingers in the mind.

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