A Supercilious Phantasm, a Bespooked Night-Mare!

George Frideric Knucklehead-if You Enquire with Me!

[Professor Pille "breaks-frame," enters the Echo World for a brief rendezvous, and publishes there his review of Nikolaus Harnoncourt's recording of Handel's Messiah posted upon the Echo World Amazon site and in response or mirroring to the equally bombastic yet utterly serious rant posted there by one Dr Jacques Courladeau]

Handel Messiah--Concentus Musicus Wien, Harnoncourt-an Evisceration

Upon applying my auricular appurtenances to the appraisal of this specific rendering of the notorious, antiquated, and hyperbolic-ally flatulent pseudo-masterpiece of one G. Handel, this humble listener is at a catastrophic loss to apprehend in even the most brain-absent insectoid manner the alleged scintillating attributes of the composition at hand, the purported and varied merits of its so-called interpretation as provided here through the compact disc medium, and the pencil-like point of the entire execrable endeavor. What confronts and confounds this amply-hardened listener is a mere series of "numbers," mumblings, and over-reaching tunes; loud brayings and exhibitions; and hootings, hollerings, and trumpetings (both real and alluded to) attempting in the most schoolboy-amateurish way, as it were, and in an emboldened excessive abandonment of priceless leisure hours, to extol--musically, if one could credit it--the merits of some bobbling, belching, historical child or other, born on the dusty grounds and within the confines of a common milk cow-barn! Why such soporifically banal events as the slap-stick antics of a pair of common Semitic suburbanites with their birthing quandary, their astounding encounters with flickering streetlights and besotted Wise-Guys, and all the particulars of the life of the babe--up to and including a last second epiphany of carpentry--should warrant the usage of substantial monies and unbridled artistic forces unequalled in these modern times is a full-tilt toboggan ride of a conundrum to any and all vaguely semi-conscious men. As the abomination terminated with caterwauling choruses of Hallelujahs I too enjoined my voice for Truly and Hallelujah, the sickly musical behemoth had finally upended and passed! Such a tragedy that whilst in the hinterlands emaciated Chinese coolies dig for grubs with sticks, and shivering Eskimos send their cowering ancestors afloat and awash on Popsicles; whilst half the benumbed planet is without simple tin lunch pails or embroidered stockings, titanic, colossal, nay, near infinite towers of treasure are cast forever into the deepest dung pits in order to finance wholly worthless enterprises such as these. I am aghast and appalled!