Handel's Messiah: The history and brilliance of the holiday mainstay explained

With its booming score and joyous chorus of "hallelujah," German composer George Frideric Handel's Messiah continues to be a musical rite of the holiday season, more than 250 years after it was first composed.

"We hear it so often, and we think we know it so well, that we may sometimes forget how amazing that piece is," said June Goldsmith, the organizer of several concert series in B.C., including Music in the Morning, Whistler's Music in the Mountains, and many more.

Goldsmith joined North by Northwest host Sheryl MacKay to explain what makes this piece so iconic.

A comeback for Handel

Goldsmith said Handel left his native Germany in his early twenties for Italy, where he "soaked up the sunshine of Italy, and also the Italian style of writing operas."

Handel became famous around Europe for writing these Italian operas, in which the acrobatic vocal ability of the singers was given more importance than the opera's narrative.

But after 30 years of writing these operas, he found that they had suddenly gone out of style.

"John Gay wrote The Beggar's Opera of 1724, and English people thought, 'I don't really want to hear Italian sung anymore, and I don't like these airy-fairy topics,' " Goldsmith said.

Handel, who owned a number of opera companies, quickly went bankrupt.

But, "broke, and at age 55, he re-invented himself," Goldsmith added.

Handel realized that he could win audiences with the oratorio, a musical piece based on a Biblical or religious event which, like an opera, includes the use of a choir, soloists and an ensemble.

His first few oratorios got mixed reviews, but then, using the scriptural text compiled by his friend Charles Jennens, he composed the Messiah over a few weeks in 1741, and the rest, they say, is history.

What makes it so glorious?

What makes the many refrains of "hallelujah" so glorious is how Handel accented the syllables, Goldsmith said.

"What he does is take the first note and he puts a dot after [on the score] which means it's a little bit longer, it's one and a half beats. So the excitement from the first note spills over to the next three notes."

For the next set of hallelujah, Goldsmith said, the accent is on the second syllable: Hal-LE-lu-jah, and later, it's on the third: Hal-le-LU-jah.

Finally, the very last hallelujah, which wraps up the whole piece — and returns it to the key of D which Handel started with — has the accent on the last syllable, hal-le-lu-JAH.

"All the syllables have had their turn, and he's waited until the very last note."

To hear the full interview listen to the audio labelled: Music educator June Goldmith explains why Handel's Messiah is so 'amazing'