Sir, - I was both amused and amazed by Elaine Lafferty's piece "We can Handel this" (Arts, November 18th) about the forthcoming Dublin performances of Frank McNamara's Messiah XXI. If Mr McNamara's light-hearted approach to the planning and preparation of a musical event involving 140 people succeeds, then good luck to him and his gig. As an amateur choral singer and one of those musical "purists" he disdains, however, I find the venture distasteful on two grounds.
Firstly, we are told that £700,000 of State Millennium Committee funds are backing what is, after all, a purely commercial venture. If the millennium is to be celebrated musically, a sum of this scale would have enabled every choir in the country to put on a special production within its own community or, alternatively, purchased a great many musical instruments for struggling school orchestras.
Secondly, there is a serious question-mark over the musical integrity behind the whole idea. Messiah is regarded as one of the finest and most uplifting works in Western musical culture. Many people also see it as having an additional spiritual dimension. Allowing that there are, unfortunately, many dull performances, in a sensitive recreation it is ever fresh, ever new (surely the hallmark of a great and enduring work of art). It does not require "recomposition"; even Mozart's admiring re-instrumentation, which respected Handel's musical style and general intentions, does not find much favour nowadays.
Although Handel himself did make changes after Messiah's its premiere, it was not unusual for a composer to have second or even thoughts on a work after hearing it in performance and thereafter making adjustments - or even major changes - to its structure or orchestration (Beethoven composed the overture to Fidelio four times before he was satisfied). Mr McNamara sees such afterthoughts as a licence to "recompose" the work, ignoring the fact that the key to any legitimate revision process is that the intellectual owner of the work, the composer, should be the person making these decisions. If this is to be called purism, I for one don't care.
So Messiah has been recomposed; but why stop there? As we enter the year marking Johann Sebastian Bach's 250th anniversary, perhaps we can now look forward to Mr McNamara's reinterpretation of the Mass in B Minor with the Spice Girls, Boy George, a chorus of rappers and the Riverdance troupe? Or maybe to further his quest to make art more accessible he'd like to be let loose with spray-cans on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to reinterpret Michaelangelo in the "popular idiom" of, say, Andy Warhol or Jeff Kroons? Just think - the possibilities are endless! Dumbing down is such fun! - Yours, etc.,
Bernard Keogh, Dollymount Park, Clontarf, Dublin 3.