Dr. John Egbert directs the Choral Union.

One of the most popular musical pieces of all time will help usher in the Advent season this year when "Messiah" comes to Cape Girardeau.

"Messiah," George Frederick Handel's famous oratorio, will be performed at 8 p.m. Tuesday in Academic Auditorium in a concert presented by the music department of Southeast Missouri State University.

The concert will feature the Choral Union, the University Choir and the University Orchestra, as well as soloists Lori Shaffer, Dr. Elizabeth James-Gallagher, Tamara Brannon, Dr. Christopher Goeke and Thomas Lowery. Dr. John Egbert directs the choirs and will conduct the concert.

Written in 1741 in just 22 days, "Messiah" is perhaps Handel's most remembered and most often performed piece. It has been performed around the world year after year for more than two and a half centuries.

"Talk about someone who was on a roll when he wrote this stuff," said Egbert of the incredible speed at which Handel composed the work and of the complexity of music he wrote.

He points to "Rejoice Greatly, O Daughters of Zion," an aria for soprano, as an example of the genius of Handel, calling it a "phenomenally written duet between soprano and violin."

Although the oratorio was a musical form already known in Handel's day, it was Handel who brought it to the level of performance that it is known for today, Egbert said.

"He raised the oratorio to a grand scale," Egbert said.

The oratorio grew out of opera but made changes in opera to suit the sensibilities of the audience and the economic conditions of the day.

In Handel's day, many opera companies were going bankrupt. The Lenten season came during the middle of the opera season and the opera companies had to shut down during Lent. Many of the companies suffered financial losses from which they could never recover.

Handel, who was trained as an Italian opera composer, went bankrupt twice. He started writing oratorios which could be performed during Lent because they focused on religious and sacred themes.

The oratorio, like the opera, told a story through music alone. But Handel's oratorios differed in significant ways. They were written in English, not Italian; the story was sacred, not secular; the emphasis was not on solo work, but on solos and choral numbers; and the music was performed not on a stage but in a concert hall.

Egbert estimates that he sang the oratorio more than 50 times when he lived in the St. Louis area. The choral group he was part of sang the oratorio with the Saint Louis Symphony six to eight times every Christmas season.

The complete oratorio runs two and a half hours and is divided into three sections. The Christmas section makes up roughly half the work and is the part most people are familiar with, containing such works as "O Thou That Tell Us Good Tidings to Zion" and "For Unto Us a Child is Born."

The second section is the Good Friday-Easter section. Egbert describes the third section as "Man's reconciliation to God" and says it operates on "a higher level, a higher plane."

The most well-known piece from the oratorio and perhaps the most well-known choral piece in Western musical literature, "The Hallelujah Chorus," actually is not a part of the Christmas section at all, but is the last song in the Good Friday-Easter section.

Tradition has it that the king was so moved when he first heard the chorus performed that he stood in honor and respect. Because the king stood, everybody else in the concert hall stood as well. From that time to today, audiences have stood whenever the "Hallelujah Chorus" is sung.

"It may be that he stood because he was simply tired of sitting," said Egbert, pointing out that the complete "Messiah" has 53 songs and the chorus is number 44.

The concert on Tuesday will only present the Christmas section of the oratorio plus "The Hallelujah Chorus." Egbert estimates that the concert will last about an hour.

Since coming to Cape Girardeau, Egbert has conducted "Messiah" six times -- five times conducting just the Christmas section and one time conducting the entire work.

One of the biggest challenges of conducting the piece is keeping everyone together. The singers and orchestra will be spread out over the stage of Academic Hall. With 145 choral members, five soloists and 45 players in the orchestra, it is sometimes difficult to hold the group together.

Because the group is spread out, Egbert said he must exaggerate his conducting just to be seen, something which begins to take a physical toll on him as a conductor.

"There's the endurance factor of just getting through the concert," he said. "It's extremely demanding."

He said that by the time the concert is over, his arms are numb and his clothes soaked.

"Even the parts that are not physically demanding have an emotional and musical intensity that add to the demand," he said.

Egbert expects a full house. Admission is free with a university ID.

A free shuttle will be provided from Lot #4 on Henderson St., between Broadway and Normal.