Handel's Messiah
(This is a speech that I gave at a Christmas song celebration)
One famous work related to Christmas is Handel`s Messiah. Handel began composing on August 22, 1741. He grew so absorbed that he rarely left his room hardly stopping to eat. Within six days part one was complete. In nine days more part two, and in another six, part three. In all 260 pages of manuscript were filled in the remarkably short time of 24 days. A friend who visited him as he composed found him sobbing with intense emotion. Messiah premiered on April 13, 1742 as a benefit. A year later Handel staged it in London for the King of England. As the first notes of the Hallelujah Chorus rang out, the king rose. Following royal protocol, the entire audience stood, starting a tradition that has lasted for more than two centuries. Handel personally conducted more than thirty performances of Messiah many of them benefits. The money that Handel`s performances of Messiah raised for charity led one biographer to note: "Messiah fed the hungry, clothed the naked, fostered the orphan more than any other single musical production in this or any country. Perhaps the work of no other composer have so largely contributed to the relief of human suffering.
one of the three presidents, for which the Academy is named:
Abraham
Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in a one room cabin near Hodgenville, Kentucky. His mother’s name was Nancy Lincoln and his father’s name was Thomas Lincoln, he also had a sister named Sara. Abraham was a toddler when his family moved north to Knob creek. He said that Knob Creek was the first place he remembered living. He started to go to school when he was around the age of six. When Abe (Abe was his nickname) was seven years old they moved to Indiana. When Abe was eight, his aunt and uncle and cousin moved near the Lincolns. His aunt and uncle died of milk sickness so they adopted their cousin Dennis. When Abe was nine years old his mother died from the same sickness. Abe, Sarah and Dennis were very sad. She died at the age of thirty. The last thing she did was to call all of the children to her side and she told them to be good. A year later Thomas Lincoln went back to Kentucky to find a wife. He returned with Sarah Bush. She had three children and loved her stepchildren very much.
Abe didn’t go to school very much but he taught himself. He would borrow books to read in the fields. Abe read every thing he could get his hands on. Sometimes he would walk twenty miles just to get a book. When Abe was sixteen he was six feet tall! At the age of seventeen Abe left home for a few months to work as a ferryman’s helper on the Ohio river. When Abe was eighteen his sister Sarah died giving birth to her first child in 1828. A local merchant named James Gentry hired Abe to accompany his son, Allen, on a twelve hundred mile flat boat voyage to New Orleans. New Orleans was the first real city they had ever seen. In 1830, when Abe was 21, Abe’s father sold the Indiana farm and moved near the town of Decatur, Illinois. At the age of twenty-two he went to New Salem, Illinois to work in a general store. In 1832 the store went out of business so at the age of twenty-three Abe decided to run for the Illinois state legislature. He lost. So he went on to run another general store with William Berry. The store went out of business. William died leaving Abe with $1,100 worth of debt. He promised to pay every cent so he went to look for any job he could find. He found all kinds of jobs. He hired himself out as farmhand for a time. He ran a grist mill. He was postmaster. Then he was hired to be a deputy to the local surveyor.
In 1834 he ran for the legislature, and he came in second. He was elected to House of Representatives. He had also accepted a job as junior partner in John Todd Stuart’s Springfield law office. In April, he went back to New Salem for the last time to pack his belongings and say goodbye to his friends. By 1840 New Salem was nothing more than a ghost town. Abe was twenty-eight when he went to Springfield, Illinois. When he was thirty he fell in love with Mary Ann Todd. He met her in the winter of 1839 when she came to stay with her brother and sister-in-law. They were engaged in 1840. Mary’s sister and brother-in-law did not approve of Abe and they tried to prevent the marriage. In 1841, Abe broke off the engagement because nobody in Mary’s family seemed to like him. Abe went a bit crazy for a time after thinking that he had lost Mary. On November 7, 1842 Abe and Mary stood together and told Mary’s family that they were deeply in love and they were going to be married. They had the wedding that very night at the home of Mary’s sister that had originally disapproved. Their first child, Robert, was born in 1846. They had another boy named Eddie in 1850. Willie was born in 1851 and Thomas in 1853.
In 1860 Abraham Lincoln ran for president of the United States of America. On November 6, 1860 he was elected. In 1861 he left for Washington to be the first bearded president. Also in 1861, the South seceded from the United States over the issue of slavery and war broke out between the North and the South. On July 1st 1863, the two armies met to fight at Gettysburg. There, over 170,000 troops clashed in the bloodiest battle in U.S. history. Lincoln gave the Gettysburg address on November 19, 1863. This speech has become one of the most famous speeches in our nations history. By early 1865, the North had defeated the South. On April 14, 1865 the South officially surrendered and the Civil War was ended and the nation was one again. During the time of the war, Lincoln had suffered to end the war and bring the nation back together and he had suffered personally with the death of his son Willie in 1862. The same evening of the South’s surrender, Abe and Mary attended a play at Ford’s Theatre. Actor John Wilkes Booth shot the dear, tired president in the head and he died the next day. Six days later, Wilkes himself was shot in a Virginia barn by army troops. I am grateful for Abraham Lincoln and he will always be one of my heroes.
For more information:
