| PROGRAM NOTES |
HANDEL AND HAYDN SOCIETY PROGRAM NOTES
It is well known that Handel composed Messiah in a very short period of
time—24 days. The swiftness of the project, or the sacred
nature of the text, may have contributed to Handel’s somewhat
simple treatment of the orchestra. Four-part strings and continuo
(bass instruments plus harpsichord harmony) was Handel’s
foundation. Two oboes were added only in the overture and choruses,
always doubling the violins or sopranos (sometimes altos), with no
independent parts, and a pair of trumpets strengthened three D-major
choruses, two of which included timpani. But even given this rather
basic orchestral pretext—indeed, perhaps because of
it—Handel’s talent for pulling the dramatic nuances of the
text to the surface using instrument and voice conventions has made
Messiah perhaps the most popular single musical work of all time.
Messiah is an unusual oratorio in that, unlike the examples we were
treated to in the first concert of the season, “Celebrate
Handel,” it is not a narrative, a story. Rather, it is a
three-part outline of the Biblical concept of “Messiah”
(note the title is not “The Messiah,” simply
“Messiah”), beginning with Old Testament Messianic
prophecy, going through the birth, life, death and resurrection of
Jesus, the Messiah, and concluding with an exegesis on the state of the
Christian faith as a result of this Messiah having been among us.
At first glance this seems to fit neatly into a typical three-act
format of Prophecy/Christ/Church. However the first part,
sometime referred to as the “Christmas” section, takes us
through a series of prophecies, raising our expectations as in an
opera, until finally these prophesies receive their dramatic
culmination in Christ’s birth at the conclusion of part
one. A most interesting decision in terms of the dramatic shape
of Messiah was to make this birth portion at the end of part one the
only remotely narrative segment of the entire oratorio. In a most
ingenious maneuver, Handel sets the prophecy and birth narrative
portions apart not by a change of acts, an intermission, but by the
only instrumental movement in the oratorio other than its
overture. The Christ child, then, has his own
“arrival” sinfonia (No. 13 Pifa), as had the Queen of Sheba
in Solomon and Iphis in Jephtha (coming to greet her father).
Naturally, rather than a noisy march, it is a simple, sweet lullaby for
strings alone based on the sicilienne or pifa, a flowing compound meter
type of melody, featuring dotted rhythms on one or two beats of the
measure. To 18th century audiences, the sicilienne (pifa) was
associated with shepherds in the areas surrounding Sicily, and not
uncommonly was used in instrumental works composed for Christmas (e.g.
Corelli’s famous “Christmas Concerto”). With its
whispering violin and viola melodies, and rustic, droning bass, we are
invited into the fields on that quiet first Christmas night, among the
shepherds humming softly or playing the “piffaro”
(shepherd’s pipe). The dramatic effect generated by this
music parallels the famous moment in A Charlie Brown Christmas when
Linus steps onto the stage, requests “Lights, please,” and
begins “And there were shepherds abiding in the fields . .
.”; the very text from Luke’s gospel which follows
Handel’s pifa in a series of recitatives for soprano (Nos. 14-16;
perhaps a shepherd boy’s voice?). These are the first soprano
solos in the oratorio, thus their words and consequently the birth
narrative itself receive a musical halo. As recitative was the
traditional style for describing action in opera, the use of successive
recitatives here underscores the narrative dramatic device.
Handel also drew upon the pastoral sicilienne and solo soprano voice,
representing simplicity, innocence and the Good Shepherd, in the arias
“He shall feed his flock like a shepherd” (No. 20) and
“How beautiful are the feet of him” (No. 38), and taken at
the proper tempo, the rhythmic flow and sweetness of the soprano solo
in “I know that my Redeemer liveth” (No. 45) also suggest
the sicilienne, and so remind us of the humble birth of our Redeemer.
The intimate solo recitatives and arias in Messiah demonstrate
Handel’s prowess in conveying the meaning of text and shaping the
dramatic content using the most basic instrumental materials.
Only one aria, “The trumpet shall sound” (No. 48), features
an instrumental soloist, while in seven the violin section accompanies
the soloists in conversation, much like in the arias heard in the first
concert of the season. Handel relied more on melodic, rhythmic
and ornamental gestures to paint the words in these vocal solo
movements, rather than on orchestral colors. Soprano, alto and
tenor received about the same number of solos, with the bass singing
fewer. Although soprano was most often used for texts regarding
innocence and shepherding, in “Rejoice greatly” (No. 18)
her calm report of the Savior’s speaking “peace to the
heathen” in the middle part of the aria is surrounded by the
excitement of her clear coloratura voice bidding the daughter of
Jerusalem to “rejoice” in long melismatic roulades, and her
high “shouts” of praise. No clear dramatic identity
seems to be present for the alto soloist. Because the soprano voice
seems to have been held in reserve until the birth narrative, those
texts calling for a female character before the pifa movement, such as
the prophetic “Behold, a virgin shall conceive” (No. 8),
are written for alto. The alto shares in Messiah’s only duets:
“He shall feed his flock” (No. 20) with the soprano, which
was originally written for soprano alone, and “O death, where is
thy sting” (No. 50) with the tenor, one of five Messiah movements
that Handel “borrowed” from his own Italian cantatas,
rewriting the words. (The others are the choruses “And he
shall purify,” “For unto us a child is born,”
“His yoke is easy,” and “All we like
sheep.”) The first solo voice we hear is the tenor, who
opens the drama following the overture as his traditional historicus
(story-teller) role would have called for, in the recitative-aria pair
“Comfort ye—Ev’ry valley” (Nos. 2-3). The
comforting calmness of the throbbing strings and slow, steady vocal
line of the accompanied recitative surrenders to the aria’s
march-like crispness, with the strings echoing the voice as if off of
the mountains surrounding the valley, the rising “exalted”
vocal melismas, and the expansive “plain” held notes.
The story-teller tenor returns in “All they that see Him, laugh
Him to scorn” (No. 27). But here, at the half-way point in
the oratorio, his role changes, for this recitative begins a series of
chorus (“He trusted in God”) followed by tenor solos
(“Thy rebuke hath broken His heart,” “Behold, and see
if there be any sorrow,” “He was cut off out of the land of
the living,” “But Thou didst not leave His soul in
hell”) which carries us through the pivotal events of
Christ’s crucifixion, descent, and finally emergence from hell,
partly as narrative, partly as contemplation. Thus, the tenor has
become the hero, as was frequently his opera and oratorio assignment,
claiming “victory o’er the grave.” The bass
soloist, too, has a dual purpose in Messiah. He is a voice from
beyond; God himself in the recitative “Thus saith the Lord”
(No. 5), and in the recitative-aria pair “Behold, I tell you a
mystery—The trumpets shall sound” (Nos. 47-48), he and the
solo trumpet march through the catacombs at the end of time, each with
climbing fanfare figures to raise the dead and difficult, twisting
passages representing our resurrected bodies being
“changed” into their pure eternal state. But the bass
also is assigned the most condemning texts of the oratorio, steadily
marching us down into the depths of our sin and ignorance in “For
behold, darkness shall cover the earth—The people that walk in
darkness” (Nos. 10-11), so that we can be pulled up to the
“great light” of salvation, and showing us our own
destructive “rage” through long, angry melismas in
“Why do the nations so furiously rage” (No. 40).
Indeed, Handel’s solo movements tap the conventional
characteristic use of the solo voices to dramatize the more personal,
intimate segments of this text. But it is the many choruses of
Messiah, explicating more communal objectives, utilizing the colors of
the full orchestra, and in greater numbers than occur in operas, that
made oratorio a favorite dramatic genre of 1740s London, and Messiah
the popular piece it has remained. So very exciting are those
choruses in which the trumpets and timpani announce heavenly glory, the
King of Kings, and Christ’s triumphant placement at God’s
right hand. Trumpets are first heard accompanying the chorus of angels
in “Glory to God in the highest” (No. 17), immediately
following the soprano recitatives of the birth narrative. The high
tessitura of the voices on the words “Glory to God in the
highest” juxtaposed to low unison voices announcing “and
peace on earth” creates for us a vast musical space between the
heavenly and earthly realms. In a typically Handelian dramatic
gesture, the two trumpets accompany the former words, not the latter,
and are directed to sound “at a distance,” not joined by
timpani. These trumpets are coming from Heaven, not earth, and so
are unseen and barely heard by the shepherds. Trumpets are not
heard again until the end of part two, after Christ’s
resurrection and his awarding of the final badge of “Prophet,
Priest and King” in the famous “Hallelujah” chorus
(No. 44). Handel wants us to associate trumpets and timpani
directly with the royal nature of the King of Kings, for even though
this movement begins forte in the orchestra followed by shouts of
“Hallelujah” in the chorus, the trumpets remain silent
until after the words “For the Lord God omnipotent
reigneth,” at which time they play the earlier
“Hallelujah” tune, and then they return for the text
“King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” Finally, in the
very last set of choruses, “Worthy is the Lamb—Blessing and
Honor—Amen” (No. 52), the victorious Christ, worthy of
powers and riches, etc., receives praise from all of the members of the
band, in a most triumphant conclusion.
These choruses raise us into the joy of worshipping the triumphant King
with the textural complexity of the full orchestral and choral forces
rendering their own separate lines, in the so-called “new
style” or “concerted style” that blossomed in the
17th and early 18th centuries, particularly in opera. During
Handel’s time, another “old style” or “a
cappella (of the chapel) style” of music, usually associated with
sacred works and an earlier tradition, had no independent instrumental
parts. The instruments, if present, played along with the voice parts,
and these were often contrapuntal, as in a fugue. Handel
effectively used the a cappella texture, in both fugue and hymn-like
contexts, to reflect the words and shape this drama in several choral
movements. For example, Handel sometimes utilized fugal texture, with
very little if any extraneous orchestral material, to represent the
confusion of a throng of speakers, such as the crowd at the foot of the
cross challenging Jesus “He trusted in God; let him deliver him .
. .” (No. 28), or the buzz of the heavenly host’s praises
in “Let all the angels of God worship him” (No. 35).
“And with his stripes” (No. 25) shows a quite a different
use of the fugue texture, as the various contrapuntal
lines—voices doubled by instruments—appear as
“stripes” on the pages of the score (Augenmusik=
“eye-music”; the appearance of an idea in music’s
written format). But perhaps Handel’s most effective use of
the a cappella style occurs in choruses where a textual polarity is
dramatized by sudden changes between the concerted style and the older
church style in a hymnodic rather than fugal setting. At the end
of “All we like sheep” (No. 26) such a change emphasizes
the profound principle that despite our straying from God, we are
reconciled to Him because “the Lord hath laid on [Christ] the
iniquity of us all.” More shuddering still is the
shift back and forth between a cappella and concerted styles in
“Since by man came death” (No. 46), where quiet voices
alone, painfully stark and dissonant, whisper the opening line, and
later “As in Adam all die,” but orchestra and voices
together counter this emptiness in recognition of the New Adam:
“By man came also the resurrection of the dead” and
“Even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” This is
the Old versus the New Way, Death versus Life, expressed in old versus
new music styles.
CITATION
"Program
notes for Handel's Messiah" Michael Ruhling. Handel and Haydn Society.
<http://www.handelandhaydn.org/calendar/program_notes/messiah.htm> |
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