Every Valley: a book review

I finished Every Valley: The desperate lives and troubled times that made Handel’s Messiah by Charles King on Christmas Eve. It somehow seemed fitting to read this book in this season, although the oratorio Messiah was originally performed at Easter.

As some of my friends know, I visited Handel’s birthplace in Halle three times in the 1990s, I’ve toured the Handel Haus Museum in the building where Handel was born and been inside the Marktkirche where he first performed. I’ve listened to several versions of Messiah and know most of the lyrics.

Still, this book told me many things about Handel and the oratorio that made him famous that I didn’t previously know. The subtitle to the book is an accurate description—this is far more than a book about a musical work and its composer. It’s a history of the times and context from which Messiah sprang. King takes us into the lives of Messiah’s librettist, Charles Janssen, Handel’s prized female vocalist, Susannah Cibber, the lives and politics of Handel’s various patrons. Further afield, we learn about the financial struggles of composers and musical performers of the time, the waxing and waning of musical fashions and European royalty. There’s a lengthy digression on the biography of an African Muslim who was enslaved in Maryland but ended up a celebrity in England, only to return to his African home to provide slaves for the European triangular trade.

Specifically pertaining to Messiah, there’s lots of detail about how Jennens was inspired to write the libretto and its diverse sources. I learned that Handel pivoted from writing operas to writing oratorios because with the latter, he didn’t have to pay for costumes and set construction, so could pocket more of the proceeds. 

I’m a big consumer of history and biography, so in addition to learning about details of this seasonal favorite, I came away with a richer understanding of the history of Handel’s times. If you are Messiah-curious, I think you would enjoy this book.