MUSIC : Rocking the ‘Messiah’ in a Modern Christian Way : New version of Handel masterpiece will be performed twice at the Anaheim Convention Center.

Comes the holiday season, and more than coal in his stockings, a music critic dreads the inevitable performances of Handel’s “Messiah.”

Don’t get me wrong. I love the “Messiah.”

What gets me down is the dreary way so many soloists and choruses sing the words. You would think they were talking about last year’s Porsche or the price of homemade pasta in the local health food store, for all the emotion you get.

So when news of a contemporary Christian version of the work--called the “Young Messiah”--came into the office, my ears perked up. (The “Young Messiah” will play Thursday and Friday at the Anaheim Convention Center as part of a 10-city tour. The Friday performance is sold out.)

Here we were likely to hear people who believed these words. I mean, really believed them.

Now, “Contemporary Christian” is a label of praise to some groups and anathema to others. Leaving that issue aside, I decided to have a listen to the cassette--and a look at the videotape. (I mean, this is not your standard classical concert. . . . )

After all, there are various editions of this masterpiece. Handel made a number of them during his lifetime, adapting them to available singers.

And until the “authentic” period performance movement really got its steam up in the last two decades, you also could hear all kinds of “Messiahs.” Some had enormous choirs, a bevy of extra trumpets and drums, and even--on one famous recording--an anvil and cymbals. So why not an electric guitar, drums and synthesizers?

It’s easy to make a list of items a classical critic can scoff at, but what if we treat it as just another edition?

The concept originated with Norman Miller, 48, a self-described entrepreneur and executive producer of the cable television program Videosyncrasy.

“I personally love classical music,” Miller said in a recent phone interview from his company headquarters in Virginia Beach, Va. “That’s where it started.

“I was brought up very much with classical music. I went to see the ‘Messiah’ every year in Edinburgh, Scotland, with my mother and father. I had a real love for the ‘Messiah.’

“From the very beginning, from the age of 20, I wanted other people to hear the ‘Messiah’ that would possibly never, ever hear the classic version in a concert hall. . . . It has just taken a long time (for the idea) to come around.”

For all the changes, including the overlay of a rock beat, what you hear is authentic Handel--mostly.

“I think I was real sensitive to that, as other people were,” Miller said.

“We formed a committee to choose (what to include). We decided by songs that were better known or songs which would work in a more contemporary fashion. Some songs wouldn’t adapt very well in a more contemporary style.”

He sang some of the running notes on single syllables as an example of what they felt wouldn’t work in the new style.

Members of the committee included Paul Mills, credited for keyboard and rhythm arrangements, and Don Hart, who did the singing, orchestra and choral arrangements. Both are classically trained musicians, Miller said.

Clocking in at just over an hour, roughly one-third of the original, the “Young Messiah” necessarily omits much of the original, rescores sections and also changes Handel’s order.

The work begins (after the Overture) with the chorus “And the glory of the Lord” instead of the tenor recitative, “Comfort ye my people.” It ends with the “Hallelujah!” chorus tacked onto “Worthy is the Lamb” (the “Amen” chorus is omitted). This change is particularly jarring.

Some of the omitted recitatives or arias are simply spoken by a narrator (Barry “Eve of Destruction” McGuire) over the beginnings and endings of other pieces. Some of the musical parts are simplified or otherwise edited.

The soloists definitely sing American. You hear “comfert ye” instead of “comfort,” for instance, and other reminders of our everyday speech.

Still, the soloists will bend, embellish or add expressive elements to their lines, a practice expected in Handel’s time but all too rarely exercised by classically trained musicians today.

Interestingly, negative thoughts in the original are omitted.

In “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” cut is the line: “And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Instead, the whole chorus comes (at first a cappella, then with hymn-like harmonies) to repeat the opening phrases, even though Handel has no such repeat, nor such passages for chorus.

Similarly, in “The trumpet shall sound,” the entire middle section, “For this corruptible must put on incorruption” is cut. (This, however, used to be a traditional cut). Handel didn’t flinch from these ideas. Why should the “Young Messiah”?

The Overture begins as if you’re going to hear a straight classical performance, with the orchestra playing stylishly crisp rhythms.

Then on the repeat of the opening Grave passages (or at bar 13 of the score), the three-piece rock band (electric guitar, synthesizer and drums) comes in. There and in the ensuing fugue, the rhythms become blocky, even and square. Extra notes are thrown in to fill out measures.

Over time the incessant rock beat (softened to a light Latin pulse in “He was despised” and “I know that my Redeemer liveth”) begins to wear, and this points up some essential differences between rock and classical music:

Rock tends to emphasize the four-bar phrase, with the drummer accenting the second and fourth beats; classical music favors longer musical lines and less-regimented rhythms, so a steady rock beat works against Handel’s musical stresses within a bar and also his spinning out of phrases beyond a single bar or two.

For all that, Miller said that so far negative reactions to this version have been “remarkably few.”

“One or two people have written in and said that they feel I deserve to go to purgatory,” he said. “A few people have been totally offended. Also, some wrote that I was, like, tampering with Scripture.

“Then some other people wrote and said that I arranged this to replace the original ‘Messiah.’ But I always felt I could get people to listen who might otherwise not listen to it. And I have been amazed at the purists who have actually loved it. . . .

“In some ways, the most radical (arrangement) is ‘The trumpet shall sound,’ ” Miller said. “A purist would find it the hardest to accept because we’ve got this unbelievable trumpet player, Phil Driscoll, who also is a singer in the vein of Joe Cocker. So you put this outrageous trumpet playing together with his outrageous voice. Some purists have been most disturbed about this song. But I get goose bumps when I hear it. My feelings are that people are going to go wild about this song.”