The world seemed bleak in 1741 when the art patron Charles Jennens put together a libretto for Georg Friedrich Handel’s now famous oratorio, “Messiah.”

The mood in eighteenth-century Britain was fraught with war and the abuses of empire. The rationalism of the Enlightenment presented troubling existential questions, with Deism asserting that scripture was a human invention and that God keeps a distance from human life.

Jennens’ libretto was a response to his time — and ours.

The libretto begins with words of hope, “Comfort ye, my people, saith your God.” From there it goes on to foretell a Messiah, proclaim the birth of Jesus, his death and resurrection, and God’s ongoing presence in the world.

Jennens’ text is a collage of passages from the King James Version of the Bible and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. It draws mostly from Hebrew Scripture, including the Book of Isaiah and the Psalms and concludes with verses from the New Testament.

To hear “Messiah,” consider the video recording of the American Bach Soloists performing Handel’s oratorio at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco in 2020.

For the full text of the oratorio, see the pdf from the Handel and Haydn Society’s of Jennens’ libretto for the “Messiah.”

Prepare to feel hope!

More about music at “Widowed: John Donne, Meet Leonard Cohen — And Send Us a Song, Please, From the Mystery Beyond.”    And “Widowed: Dancing Makes Me Cry.”