I was discussing with a colleague how long the Christmas portion of the Messiah was compared to the whole thing. Feeling the need to justify my thought that it was certainly more than an hour, I built the attached handy-dandy Messiah time calculator.
Just check the boxes for the movements you wish to include. To toggle the state of an entire part, click on the part header. Totals are listed at the bottom.
By default, only the average and median times are shown. Use the checkboxes below to enable/disable columns based on individual sources. In the raw data display, entries faster than the median are shown in red and the entries slower than the median in blue.
| Part 1 | |
|---|---|
| Sinfony | |
| Comfort ye my people | |
| Ev’ry valley shall be exalted | |
| And the glory of the Lord | |
| Thus saith the Lord of hosts | |
| But who may abide? | |
| And he shall purify | |
| Behold, a virgin shall conceive | |
| O thou that tellest good tidings | |
| For behold, darkness shall cover the earth | |
| The people that walked in darkness | |
| For unto us a child is born | |
| Pastoral symphony | |
| There were shepherds abiding | |
| And lo, the angel of the Lord | |
| And the angel said unto them | |
| And suddenly there was with the angel | |
| Glory to God in the highest | |
| Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion | |
| Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened | |
| He shall feed his flock | |
| His yoke is easy | |
| Part 1 Total | |
| Part 2 | |
| Behold the Lamb of God | |
| He was despised | |
| Surely he has borne our griefs | |
| And with his stripes we are healed | |
| All we like sheep have gone astray | |
| All they that see him laugh him to scorn | |
| He trusted in God | |
| Thy rebuke hath broken his heart | |
| Behold and see if there be any sorrow | |
| He was cut off | |
| But thou didst not leave his soul in hell | |
| Lift up your heads, O ye gates | |
| Unto which of the angels | |
| Let all the angels of God worship him | |
| Thou art gone up on high | |
| The Lord gave the word | |
| How beautiful are the feet | |
| Their sound is gone out | |
| Why do the nations? | |
| Let us break their bonds | |
| He that dwelleth in heaven | |
| Thou shalt break them | |
| Hallelujah | |
| Part 2 Total | |
| Part 3 | |
| I know that my Redeemer liveth | |
| Since by man came death | |
| Behold, I tell you a mystery | |
| The trumpet shall sound | |
| Then shall be brought to pass | |
| O death, where is thy sting? | |
| But thanks be to God | |
| If God be for us | |
| Worthy is the Lamb | |
| Amen | |
| Part 3 Total | |
| Overall Total | |
The data for the durations comes from my personal collection of Messiah recordings, plus a few borrowed from friends:
For many recordings, movements are combined into a single track, which I have manually listened to and extracted the duration.
Some recordings skipped movements (sacrilege!) and so they are not factored in.
Some recordings skipped the da capo sections (blasphemy!) or used alternate versions. When displayed, those are marked with an asterisk and eliminated for the purposes for averaging.