Hallelujah! The famous chorus goes viral on the web

As millions of YouTube viewers know, the "Hallelujah Chorus" is even hotter than usual this year.

The wave started with a flash-mob performance by the Opera Company of Philadelphia and hundreds of local choristers. Dressed as shoppers, they sang the best-known anthem from George Handel's "Messiah" oratorio at noon in the downtown Philadelphia Macy's, which was already decked out for the holidays on Oct. 30. YouTube views: 6.6 million.

Then came the Nov. 13 performance that sent the viral-video trend into overdrive, when 100 vocalists -- led by a young woman singing the opening hallelujahs into her cell phone -- shocked a food-court crowd in a shopping mall in Welland, Ontario. YouTube views: 25 million.

There are online reports and rumors about similar "Hallelujah Chorus" sneak attacks elsewhere. The key is that many onlookers know this classic by heart and can sing along without missing many beats.

Music professor not surprised

These are strange scenes, but they would not surprise anyone who has studied the history of Handel's masterwork and its stunning popularity, especially among American believers, said Calvin Stapert, a retired music professor at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. He is the author of a new book, "Handel's Messiah: Comfort for God's People."

The Macy's performance was spectacular and the food-court performance was just as fascinating in its own way, he said.

"Some of them are so deeply moved that this anthem to their savior is being sung in such a secular environment," he said. "Then there are others who make it clear that, for them, this is nothing more than ... a novel way of saluting a cornerstone of Western musical culture."

No one knows why "Messiah" has become so popular, Stapert said. The work's omnipresence -- with performances in churches, civic centers and elite concert halls -- is probably the result of "musical, textual, social, religious and psychological factors that will never be completely unraveled." There is no precedent in music history for this phenomenon.

Handel was in no-man's land

For starters, Handel is an unlikely hero for today's musical masses.

He was a "reluctant 18th-century German Lutheran composer who would have preferred to continue writing Italian operas in Protestant England, a country that had no oratorio tradition until he 'invented' it. The rest, as they say, is history," Stapert wrote in his book.

Then there was "Messiah: A Sacred Oratorio," which was composed in 24 days and performed for the first time in Dublin in 1742 and a year later in London. The libretto covered the drama of the full Christian liturgical year, yet the work was never intended for church performances. Handel originally composed the work for about 24 skilled singers and 24 instrumentalists.

Today, "Messiah" is often performed with choruses consisting of 100 singers or more and orchestras of every imaginable size and composition. In many performances, amateur performers are forced to cut the tempos of Handel's mercurial, dancing choruses until they resemble lumbering musical stampedes.

To state the matter bluntly, Stapert noted, no complex work of classical music "has survived, let alone thrived, on so many performances, good, bad and indifferent, by and for so many people year after year for such a long time."

Now, the most famous anthem from this Christian masterpiece has reached the true public square of our age, in the same mix as "Jingle Bells" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

"You have to ask," Stapert said, "if many people are really listening to the words. After all, who is this 'King of Kings and Lord of Lords'? ... You have to think that the cultural police would be out in a matter of minutes to shut this down if people were paying attention to this profoundly Christian work that is being sung right out in the open, in a mall. Has the 'Hallelujah Chorus' become so familiar that people cannot hear what it's saying?"