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revolutionary!
    With music written from Handel’s 1728 opera
Siroe
, adapted by American composer Lowell Mason, “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks” is the only composition from Tate and Brady’s supplement still sung today.
    The son of an Irish vicar, Tate moved to London in an attempt to make a living as a poet. In becoming poet laureate he made it to the very pinnacle of his chosen profession. Unfortunately, he died at age sixty-three while claiming sanctuary in the Royal Mint, a man deeply in debt and pursued by his creditors. Thankfully he left this world a classic carol announcing the birth of “the heavenly Babe” before passing on to a realm where he would find that all his debts were already forgiven.
    The L ORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters
.
    P SALM 23:1–2

For unto Us a Childs Born
    For unto us a Child is born
,
Unto us a Son is given
,
And the government shall

be upon His shoulder
,
And His Name shall be called

Wonderful, Counsellor
,
The Mighty God, the Everlasting Father
,
The Prince of Peace
.

The Master of Effects
    R ecalling the creation of his masterpiece
Messiah
, George Frideric Handel said, “I saw the heavens opened … and God sitting on the throne … whether I was in my body or out of my body when I wrote it I know not. God knows.”
    His oratorio, from which “For unto Us a Child Is Born” and “I Know My Redeemer Liveth” come, was written at a phenomenal pace, probably in the country home of Charles Jennings, the author of the libretto. From start to finish, Handel’s composition of the music for
Messiah
took just twenty-four days in the summer of 1741. Jennings’s words drew heavily from the Bible, telling the story of Jesus Christ from His anticipation to His glorification. “For unto Us a Child Is Born” comes from Isaiah 9:6 with additions by Jennings.
    The collaboration with Jennings came at a low point in Handel’s career, but such was the inspiration found in the words that the composer (so legend has it) could be heard weeping as he worked.
    Despite opposition to the Lord’s words being performed in London theaters,
Messiah
was quickly reckoned to be the greatest composition ever. Early performances were held in aid of debtors’ prisons and orphanages, enabling the delighted press to write that the
Messiah
had “fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and fostered the orphan.ȝ
    Handel’s music was held in such high esteem that Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart all admired him. Beethoven described him as musically “the master of us all” and advised students to “go to him to learn how to achieve great effects, by such simple means.”
    Master of this technique though he was, Handel surely would have considered himself a novice next to God. After all, the birth of a child has to be the simplest of all means, but what “great effects” that had!
    And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him
.
    L UKE 2:40

Go, Tell It
on the Mountain
    Go, tell it on the mountain
,
Over the hills and everywhere;

Go, tell it on the mountain

That Jesus Christ is born!

Songs of Suffering and Joy
    I f any one group could identify with the suffering of the Jewish people during their time of exile, it would be the people taken from Africa and sold into generations of slavery. It’s little wonder that, lacking any other support, those slaves, in the fields and homes of their owners, turned to God for love and redemption.
    A rich tradition of gospel songs sprang from the fertile ground of their suffering, but theirs was not a lifestyle that allowed for the writing of music or the copying down of songs. Who knows how many praise-filled melodies came and were lost for the lack of a pen and an interested listener?
    In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, John Wesley Work tried to remedy the situation. Graduating in 1895 from Fisk (at the time a