In July 1741, librettist Charles Jennens sent a new oratorio text to England’s best-known composer of the age, George Frideric Handel. Handel had previously set to music Jennens’s oratorio libretto, “Saul,” based on the Old Testament story. (An oratorio is a musical work for voices and instruments with narrative text. Unlike opera, it isn’t staged.)
The new text was more ambitious. Jennens wrote in a letter to a friend:
