It's Hard To Cancel Culture When It's The Real Thing

 In the current war by various aggrieved populations against white, Eurocentric culture, one sees in particular a strong desire to "cancel" (as the prevailing idiom goes) anything and everything associated with white males. But it is not so easily done when a particular artifact is, in effect, the real thing.

A case in point is a recent New York Times story entitled "A 'Messiah' for the Multitudes, Freed from History's Bonds." Therein, the Times reports on how a Canadian entity named the Grain Theater in cooperation with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra has put together a version of "Messiah" aimed at celebrating the country's multicultural aspects and in some cases, grievances.

But hey, wait a minute. The music is still that written about 280 years ago by a white male, George Friedrich Handel, a German by birth but English by choice and eventually a British citizen. And for good reason: no one has since ever been able to do anything like it.

"Handel understands effect better than any of us -- when he chooses, he strikes like a thunderbolt." That's an English translation of something Mozart said in German. And Handel's genius in that respect is ever-present in 'Messiah,' written as a secular oratorio despite the fact that it tells the story of Christ.

So the Canadian version referenced above features, among other things, a Muslim woman in a head scarf singing "She (as opposed to 'he' [Jesus]) was despised" to reflect her own family situation. And so forth and so on.

Handel, by the way did not write the words to "Messiah."  Rather, they were assembled from the Bible and the Book of Common prayer by a wealthy, but largely forgotten Englishman named Charles Jennens. So changing them does not in anyway strike a blow at the composer. In this case, it doesn't even strike much of a blow at Jennens. Rather, the soprano mentioned above, Rihab Chaieb, alters some Biblical words she doesn't happen to think are important in order to co-opt Handel's achievement for her own purposes.

"My reinterpretation of the 'Messiah' is about feeling despised and rejected as a first-generation immigrant in Montreal." she told the Times. "But by taking Jesus out of the equation and making it more personal, I have reclaimed the 'Messiah' as my own." In other words, "it's all about me" which is pretty much the mantra of the present.

I suppose she could have written or commissioned new, more politically correct or "woke" music, based on the racial, cultural or sexual status of the composer,  for her sentiments rather than relying on some old white male melody, but one suspects the impact would not be quite the same.