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How composer Handel's 'Messiah' came to be

WBUR | By Here & Now Newsroom
Published December 23, 2024 at 11:46 AM EST
The cover of "Every Valley" and author Charles King. (Courtesy of Doubleday and Mary Fecteau)
Courtesy of Doubleday and Mary Fecteau
The cover of "Every Valley" and author Charles King. (Courtesy of Doubleday and Mary Fecteau)

Editor’s note: This segment was rebroadcast on Dec. 24, 2025. Find that audio here. 

Host Scott Tong gets the behind-the-scenes story of the creation of George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah” with Georgetown professor Charles King, author of the new book “Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel’s Messiah.”

By Charles King

From “Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times that Made Handel’s Messiah” by Charles King. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Charles King.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

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Here & Now Newsroom