Everything about the Handel and Haydn Society is vintage: the name, the music and the instruments. Today, as it’s always been, H+H is rooted in musical tradition.
"Why it was called Handel and Haydn was simply," said Artistic Director Harry Christophers, "Handel was the old, Haydn was the new."
The society was founded in the early 1800s by a group of Boston musicians desperate to bring the music of Europe to the culturally constricted United States.
"For people in Boston in 1815, these composers were sort of the powerhouses of music," Christophers said. "Handel from the Baroque period, where of course you know the famous people are Handel, Bach, Vivaldi. And then we get to the classical period, where music is developing."
This year marks the organization’s 200th anniversary. That makes it the oldest continuously performing arts group in the country, even older than many of the most prestigious orchestras in Europe.
It’s a history maintained by H+H’s resident archivist, Teresa Neff, whose materials date to the Society’s first concert at King’s Chapel, Christmas Day, 1815.
"Thomas Smith Webb, our first president and conductor, was threatening an extra rehearsal on Christmas afternoon because he didn’t think things were quite up to performance standards," Neff said. "This threat was not followed through with."
The emphasis for that first concert was on the chorus—roughly 90 men and ten women—and all middle class. The orchestra numbered a mere 13. H+H’s founders called for good singing voices but conceded performers didn’t actually need to be able to read music. Their first time out, the audience numbered a thousand, and the performance pulled in $496.
"It was considered a financial and artistic success," Neff said. "So much so, the newspapers were calling for a repeat of a concert, which happened in January. We have a newspaper from 1816 that announced that January concert."
Almost immediately H+H’s popularity ballooned. More performances, more premieres. Neff said H+H became a society in both name and in practice.
"The society was always the focus of their activities," she said. "And just by sheer numbers, I began counting in the 19th century how many men and how many women, well over 3,000 in the 19th century."
Today the orchestra sounds as it would have 200 years ago, with musicians playing on period instruments.
"It’s gone from the days where people would pick up a period instrument and sort of be learning on the job in effect." she said. "We’re now seeing students come out in the professional world who already know a lot about their instrument and devote themselves very much to that."
With a bicentennial now under H+H’s belt, Christophers has no concerns about going for baroque in an age of Beyonce. There is always a place for Handel and Haydn and hip-hop, he said.
"I myself have an eclectic taste in music," he said. "If I’m not performing this sort of music, I’m listening to Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones; that’s the sort of music that I grew up with and I love. So people should experiment in music and have a wide love of music. What period music does is it shows to an audience that we believe in what we do, and I think if you have total faith in what you do, people respect that."
