Handel's Messiah Trivia
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50 free Handel's Messiah trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Handel's Messiah is the most performed choral work in the English-speaking world, and almost everything people think they know about it is worth checking. This quiz covers the real story: the wealthy, argumentative librettist who stitched the text together from the King James Bible and the Prayer Book psalter, the 24 days in the late summer of 1741 in which Handel wrote the music, the letters SDG at the end of the manuscript, the Dublin charity premiere at which ladies were asked to leave their hoops at home, the cool London reception, the Foundling Hospital performances, and the story of King George II standing for the Hallelujah chorus that nobody can actually prove. It also covers the music itself: the three parts and what each is about, the Pifa and the French-overture Sinfony, why the trumpets are held back, which key the work aspires to, the Italian love duets Handel recycled into famous choruses, and the two centuries of ever-larger performances, from Mozart's reorchestration to the 2,000-voice Crystal Palace festivals, before scholars brought the work back to Handel's own scale. Easy questions ask when it premiered and what a Hallelujah is for; hard ones get into Corelli fugues, Gaetano Guadagni and Watkins Shaw. It suits choir members, music students, church musicians and anyone who sings along every December. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Messiah, its parts, Handel and Charles Jennens, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which rock guitarist later lived next door to Handel's London home?
Hendrix
Hendrix moved into the top-floor flat at 23 Brook Street in 1968, two centuries after Handel composed Messiah and died next door at number 25; the two homes now form a single museum.
Q 02For which Christian festival was Messiah originally intended and first performed?
Easter
Easter was the plan from the start: the text was ready in July 1741 for a performance the following spring, and the last Messiah Handel attended, eight days before he died, was an April one as well.
Q 03Who compiled the libretto of Messiah from the King James Bible and the Coverdale Psalter?
Charles Jennens
Charles Jennens wrote none of the words himself: he chose and stitched together verses from across the Bible, which is why nobody in Messiah plays a character or acts out a story.
Q 04Which Old Testament prophet's book supplies the words of Messiah's 'Ev'ry valley' and 'For unto us a child is born'?
Isaiah
Isaiah's book was written centuries before Jesus, and that was the librettist's point: Part I tells of Christ's coming almost entirely through ancient prophecy rather than through the evangelists.
Q 05The Hebrew word 'Messiah' means what?
The Anointed One
The Anointed One is also what the Greek word 'Christ' means, so 'Jesus Christ' was at first less a name than a title: Jesus the Messiah.
Q 06Handel was born in 1685 in which German town?
Halle
Halle lies in the same corner of Germany as Eisenach, where Bach was born a month later; the two giants of the age never met, though Bach once sent his son to Halle to invite Handel over.
Q 07Which honour had London given Handel by 1741?
A statue in Vauxhall Gardens
A statue in Vauxhall Gardens was paid for by the pleasure garden's owner, whose crowds loved Handel's music; it was reckoned the only such tribute to an artist in his own lifetime.
Q 08Which 1728 hit by John Gay and Pepusch mocked Handel's Italian stage works and signalled London's changing taste?
The Beggar's Opera
The Beggar's Opera put thieves and highwaymen where gods and heroes had stood and set its songs to tunes everyone knew; within months the costly Italian company Handel wrote for had collapsed.
Q 09What was Handel's first English oratorio, written for a private patron and revived in London in 1732?
Esther
Esther reached the public only as a concert: when royalty asked to see it acted, the Bishop of London forbade a Bible story on the stage, and the unstaged English oratorio was born.
Q 10With which 1711 work, staged with live sparrows, did Handel first conquer the London stage?
Rinaldo
Rinaldo began his thirty years of writing Italian operas for London; the run ended in 1741 when Deidamia closed almost at once, months before he composed Messiah.
Q 11How long did Handel take to compose the music of Messiah?
24 days
24 days sounds miraculous, but it was his normal working speed: a fortnight after finishing he had already written the first act of his next oratorio, Samson.
Q 12What did Handel write at the end of his manuscript of Messiah?
SDG — Soli Deo Gloria
SDG — Soli Deo Gloria, 'To God alone the glory', was no one-off flourish: Bach signed his church music with the same initials, and Handel used them on other scores too.
Q 13How did the librettist regard the speed with which Handel composed Messiah?
As careless negligence
Q 21The opening Sinfony of Messiah is written in what style?
A French overture
A French overture, slow and stately before it breaks into a fugue, opens the work; the librettist thought passages of it 'far unworthy of Handel', but the composer 'retain'd his Overture obstinately'.
Q 22Which key do Messiah's Hallelujah chorus and 'The trumpet shall sound' share?
D major
D major comes round at the work's moments of glory, the trumpet numbers and the triumphant close, which is why one scholar sums up the whole score as 'an aspiration towards D major'.
Q 23In 'The trumpet shall sound', which voice shares the spotlight with Messiah's solo trumpet?
Bass
As careless negligence: he had hoped for a year's work, pressed Handel to correct the 'grossest faults', and judged the result 'not near so good as he might & ought to have done'.
Q 14Which institution holds Handel's autograph manuscript of Messiah?
The British Library
The British Library has the score by way of the royal family: the heir of Handel's copyist gave the composer's manuscripts to George III, and they sat in Buckingham Palace for generations.
Q 15Which instruments are absent from Handel's original score of Messiah and joined in his London performances?
Oboes and bassoons
Oboes and bassoons are missing from the original score, which asks only for strings, trumpets and drums, forces Handel could count on finding in Dublin; he added the winds when he took the work to London.
Q 16The Messiah chorus 'For unto us a child is born' was adapted from what?
One of Handel's Italian love duets
One of Handel's Italian love duets, written weeks earlier, explains the odd stress on 'FOR unto us': in the original the singers open on an emphatic 'No!', refusing to trust love.
Q 17How many parts is Messiah divided into?
Three
Three parts mirror the three acts of the operas Handel had been writing for thirty years; like them, Messiah was made for the theatre rather than for a church service.
Q 18Which is the only 'scene' in Messiah taken from the Gospels?
The annunciation to the shepherds
The annunciation to the shepherds is the one stretch of straight storytelling, taken from Luke; elsewhere Christ's life is told at one remove, mostly through prophets, psalms and epistles.
Q 19Part II of Messiah, which ends with the Hallelujah chorus, dwells mainly on which part of Christ's story?
His Passion and death
His Passion and death fill most of Part II, yet no crucifixion is ever narrated: the suffering is told through Old Testament prophecy and psalms written centuries earlier.
Q 20What is the pastoral instrumental interlude at the mid-point of Messiah's Part I called?
The Pifa
The Pifa is named after the pifferari, shepherd pipers who came into Rome at Christmas to play in the streets; Handel had almost certainly heard them there as a young man.
The bass shares the aria with a trumpet that Handel has kept almost silent all evening; he used brass so sparingly that its return here, at the last judgment, lands with full force.
Q 24The words of the Hallelujah chorus come from which book of the Bible?
Revelation
Revelation supplies them, from its visions of heaven at the end of time, so the famous chorus greets not Christ's birth or resurrection but his final victory over his enemies.
Q 25Which Messiah aria at the premiere reportedly moved a clergyman to cry out that the singer's sins were forgiven?
He was despised
He was despised drew the cry 'Woman, for this be all thy sins forgiven thee!' from the Rev. Patrick Delany; the singer had lately been at the centre of a notorious adultery trial.
Q 26Which soprano solo, setting words from the Book of Job, opens Part III of Messiah?
I know that my Redeemer liveth
I know that my Redeemer liveth was chosen for Handel's own memorial: on his monument the sculpted composer has this aria's score open before him.
Q 27Which chorus actually closes Messiah?
Worthy is the Lamb
Worthy is the Lamb ends the work, flowing into a long fugue on the single word Amen; the Hallelujah chorus only closes Part II.
Q 28At which Dublin venue was Messiah first performed?
The Great Music Hall, Fishamble Street
The Great Music Hall, Fishamble Street, was newly built; Handel had already filled it with two popular concert series that winter before he risked his new oratorio there.
Q 29Whose invitation brought Handel to Dublin for the 1741–42 season?
The Duke of Devonshire
The Duke of Devonshire, the king's viceroy in Ireland, asked him over to give concerts for Dublin's hospitals, a welcome escape after his last two operas had failed in London.
Q 30Where did the choir for Messiah's first performance come from?
St Patrick's and Christ Church cathedrals
St Patrick's and Christ Church cathedrals lent their singers, some of whom doubled as soloists, so the first Messiah had a few dozen voices, not the choirs of hundreds that later took it over.