Blanket press coverage

31 October 2024

Blanket press coverage, especially if positive, is invaluable to a new venture. The organisers of the first ‘Messiah from Scratch’ advertised primarily by distributing leaflets in the 1974 Proms queues and the idea spread by word of mouth. Bookings trickled in, but not quite as many as hoped, and the Partners considered how to increase the publicity. Susan Burgess recalls what happened next. ‘Being endowed with a good deal of nerve, Don and David quite literally phoned up Nationwide, the popular evening BBC news programme. I believe their opening gambit was something like “We don’t believe the BBC have interviewed us yet”.

The programme editors offered them a slot in the programme. As well as the interview, they somehow managed to get an advert out to the public – unheard of on the BBC. Everyone now knew how and where to book tickets, and within days the event was sold out.’ Newspaper editors began to show interest – they sensed a good story, possibly even a catastrophe.

On the morning of the concert, The Guardian, from the pen of composer-turned-critic, Hugo Cole, printed a substantial piece on its arts page. (Its whimsical title was ‘Handel without bars’.) Cole commended the careful planning, the hand-picking of key amateur musicians and the musical credentials of the conductor. He also set ‘Messiah from Scratch’ within the context of historical performances of all shapes and sizes, refusing to condemn large-scale events despite the ‘wincing’ of Handel scholars (who tended to prefer professional authenticity to amateur enthusiasm).

Other newspapers sent journalists to the RAH, eager to report whatever might befall. As blanket press coverage goes it was pretty thorough, and all of it complimentary. ‘Retired Welsh tenor’ John Edwards (journal unknown) described the event as ‘the amateur performance of this or any recent year … nothing was nearly as interesting anywhere in town.’

Well-respected music critics such as Christopher Grier in the Evening Standard recorded favourable impressions. ‘Although [Messiah from Scratch] looked like a recipe for disaster, scientists know about cause and effect. The organisers have twigged that London is full of people who love a good sing, who enjoy playing anyway and anywhere, all of whom could be expected to be familiar with this particular work. The result was an orchestra of 250, an alert chorus of about 2,000 and hardly a seat to be had in the Hall. More than that, the whole thing was a great success … unquestionably an experience. You couldn’t help feeling a prickling in the spine when everything and everybody were going full blast.’

Frank Thorne in the Daily Express was almost poetic: ‘They came with their oboes, flutes and clarinets. They came with their trumpets, trombones and violins. If nothing else, they brought along their enthusiasm. And last night they almost raised the roof of the Albert Hall with an outstanding performance of Messiah – the largest sing-along version of Handel’s masterpiece the country has ever seen.’ (The claim was not entirely accurate: a performance at Crystal Palace in 1865 boasted an orchestra of 495 and a choir of 3,200. But no-one wanted to argue.)

In December 1975, shortly before the second performance, Reader’s Digest ran a six-page article entitled ‘The Sing-it Yourself Messiah’. It described in some detail the previous year’s success. ‘On being asked to stand, the singers stood: all 2,167 of them. The seated audience broke into nervous laughter on seeing themselves outnumbered by almost two to one by the performers. There were basses in the boxes, tenors in the stalls, sopranos and contraltos in the balcony. Twenty days early, the true spirit of Christmas had come to the Albert Hall, filled with people who were realising a long-felt desire to give voice inside that musical Mecca. [They were] relaxed, confident and having the time of their lives.’ The artcle would doubtless have boosted ticket sales, but the blanket press coverage the previous year had done its job. The second ‘Messiah from Scratch’ had sold out months previously.

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