Day 4 Trivia Answers

1. When and where was Handel’s Messiah first performed?
   • The Messiah was first performed in Dublin at the New Music Hall in Fishamble Street on April 13, 1742.
2. In 1750, Handel began presenting annual performances of the Messiah at what London location?
   • The year after Messiah’s premiere in Dublin, Handel offered it in London at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. However, it wasn’t really embraced by the public until he began presenting annual performances of the Messiah for a London charity at the local Foundling Hospital.
3. The “O Antiphons” are the basis of what popular Christmas hymn?
   • The O Antiphons (sung December 17–23 in Roman Catholic and Anglican religious communities) are the source of the Advent hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Around 1100 AD, an unknown author turned them into a metrical Latin poem. Shortly after 1700, an unknown editor printed this metrical version in the collection Psalteriolum Cantionum Catholicarum. About 150 years later, the poem came to the attention of Anglican priest and hymnwriter John Mason Neale (1818–66).
4. “Wolcum Yole!” The text of Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols (1942) is written in what language?
   • The text of A Ceremony of Carols is from The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems, edited by Gerald Bullett. Most of the text is in Middle English, with some Latin and Early Modern English. 
5. Who commissioned Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and when and where was it first performed?
   • In 1965, the Very Reverend Dr. Walter Hussey, the Dean of Chichester Cathedral, commissioned Bernstein to compose a work based on the Psalms. It was commissioned for that summer’s Southern Cathedrals Festival. The Cathedral of Chichester has collaborated with the cathedrals in Winchester and Salisbury in a summer music festival since 1960. However, the world premiere took place in the Philharmonic Hall, New York, on 15 July 1965 with the composer conducting. This was followed by the performance at Chichester on 31 July 1965, conducted by John Birch, the cathedral’s Organist and Master of the Choristers.

Like this content? Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.