Shaw (not that one) on Messiah

George Bernard Shaw:

"Handel is a sacred institution. When his Messiah is performed, the audience stands up, as if in church, while the Hallelujah chorus is being sung. It is the nearest sensation to the elevation of the Host known to English Protestants.
... Yet in England his music is murdered by the tradition of the big chorus! People think that four thousand singers must be four thousand times as impressive as one. This is a mistake: they are not even louder.
...You can get a tremendously powerful fortissimo from twenty good singers, because you can get twenty people into what is for practical purposes the same spot... but all the efforts of the conductors to get a fortissimo from the four thousand Handel Festival choristers are in vain... the sound takes an appreciable time to travel along a battle front four thousand strong; and in rapid passages the semiquaver of the singer farthest from you does not reach you until that of the signer nearest you has passed you by."

Note that he said "conductors"- plural. Most of these huge festival performances has auxiliary conductors. Shaw also proposes making a capital offense out of performing Messiah with more than 80 musicians in total. (Quoted in The Messiah Book: The Life and Times of Handel's Greatest Hit. Peter Jacobi, St. Martin's Press, 1982)

After considering this sage advice, I have canceled the additional 3,000 voices and will stick with my hearty church choir of 16.