the words of "messiah" were written by a librettist charles jennens. he chose several passages from the bible and made a libretto, which he sent to handel in 1741 (although people today often call the work "the messiah”, both handel and jennens call it "messiah" without the word “the”). handel immediately realized that a great work of music could be made from jennens’ libretto. he thought that jennens was a very clever person, and in his letters to him he calls the work “your oratorio "messiah"”. handel sat down in the front room of his house in brook street, london, and wrote the whole oratorio in twenty four days. it is a long work, lasting over four hours, and when one thinks that handel had to write out all the parts for the choir and orchestra, he must have worked unbelievably hard. when he had finished the work, he put it in a drawer for seven weeks. perhaps he thought it would never be played in london, because at that time the london audiences did not seem to like him.