Endnote 22 – Bah, Humbug!

Jennens wrote: “His Messiah has disappointed me, being set in great hast…I shall put no more Sacred Works into his hands, to be thus abus’d.” “He has made a fine entertainment of it, tho’ not near so good as he might & ought to have done. I have with great difficulty made him correct some of the grossest faults in the composition, but he retain’d his Overture obstinately, in which there are some passages far unworthy of Handel, but much more unworthy of the Messiah”—by which I hope he meant Christ, rather than his own text.