An original folk composition inspired by Handel's Messiah and containing the full scriptural text used by Handel. Featuring simple acoustic guitar and vocals, the songs of this album center on the person and work of Jesus Christ.

17 MP3 Songs in this album (94:56) !
Related styles: Folk: Alternative Folk, Spiritual: Scriptures, Type: Acoustic

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Details:
Recently I fell in love with Handel's Messiah. The music of course is phenomenal, but what really captured me were the words. The entire text is taken from the Bible. For several weeks I found myself listening to the Messiah over and over again. It was a deeply edifying experience. Before long I started singing some of the words on my own. One day I was singing to myself, "the trumpet will sound..." and reflecting on this verse when the thought came to me to take this particular passage and the basic melody line and to write my own version that I could play on guitar and sing along with. Well, what followed that thought over the course of the next 3 and a half weeks was the coming together of the following 17 songs. Together these songs contain the complete Scriptural text used by Handel and Iâve even held to the classic King James Version as a further tie in to his work. Occasionally I've added my own words to connect the biblical texts together or by way of offering a brief reflection, but these are relatively few.

About Handelâs Messiah

The year was 1741 and the German born Englishman had just suffered several failures of his most recent operas in London. Depressed and in debt, he was approached by his friend Charles Jennens who handed him a compilation of biblical texts to be used in an oratorio presenting Jesus the Messiah to a skeptical England. It was an age of rationalism, not unlike our own, and Charles Jennens wished to combat the prevalent Deism of the day. Deism holds that though there is some form of intelligence which began the universe this Intelligence does not interfere with it. It maintains that God is outside of the universe and stays out. Jennens wished that these Scriptural texts be used to present the Christian view that not only does God interact with his creation, it is critical for us that He does so. Into diseased humanity God injected Himself - the antidote. From the outside, a holy and perfect God would only terrify and crush us. From the inside though, He would transform and redeem and heal us. And so these texts, taken directly from the King James Bible, begins with the Old Testament prophecies of Isaiah, continues with the narrative of Christâs birth and then centers on the life, death, resurrection and final glorification of Jesus the Messiah. Handel was just the man to compose this oratorio using Jennens text. Not only was he one of the greatest composers of all time, I like to imagine that the recent failure of his operas in England drove him to the end of himself and allowed God to do a mighty creative work through His now broken vessel. Perhaps this is fiction, but if so, itâs good fiction. What we do know is that when he came to the point of writing the Hallelujah chorus, his assistant found him in tears crying âI did think I saw heaven open, and saw the very face of God.â

About "My Messiah"

Handel composed the Messiah in 24 days. Though in making my version I did not set out to do the same, this is essentially what happened. I started composing the songs for this album on December 10, 2010 (using the same exact biblical texts Handel used). I finished the initial composition and rough draft recording of each on January 2, 2011 (exactly 24 days). I share this not to put my feeble creation here on any kind of common footing with Handelâs. Itâs just an interesting fact I thought. Though I donât know what Handelâs experience was in interacting with the Scriptural texts during those 24 days, I know that for myself it was a deeply edifying and enriching time as each evening after work I would submit myself to a new set of Scripture texts, would listen several times to Handelâs expressions of those texts and then would start playing guitar and singing eager to see what would happen this time and where it would go. Though full of imperfections, my hope is that this work would be a testimony of one broken human beings joy in being lifted out of the mire of himself and into the new creation Jesus saved us to and for.