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For Messiah, Handel used the same musical technique as for those works, namely a structure based on chorus and solo singing. The orchestra scoring is simple. Although Handel had good string players at his disposal for the Dublin premiere, [6] he may have been uncertain about the woodwind players who might be available.
Handel breaks the text in the middle of the second verse, to open the aria with the musical idea "the trumpet shall sound". The image, first found in Exodus 19, pictures a courtly herald who blew the trumpet as a signal that the king was about to enter the throne room, a signal to stand in his honour. [4]
Messiah was presented in New York in 1853 with a chorus of 300 and in Boston in 1865 with more than 600. [81] [82] In Britain a "Great Handel Festival" was held at the Crystal Palace in 1857, performing Messiah and other Handel oratorios, with a chorus of 2,000 singers and an orchestra of 500. [83] In the 1860s and 1870s ever larger forces were ...
Messiah is not a typical Handel oratorio; there are no named characters, as are usually found in Handel’s setting of the Old Testament stories, possibly to avoid charges of blasphemy. It is a meditation rather than a drama of personalities, lyrical in method; the narration of the story is carried on by implication, and there is no dialogue.
Handel uses four voice parts in both solo and chorus, soprano (S), alto (A), tenor (T) and bass (B). Only once is the chorus divided in an upper chorus and a lower chorus, it is SATB otherwise. The orchestra scoring is simple: oboes , strings and basso continuo of harpsichord , violoncello , violone and bassoon .
Collected editions of Handel's works include the Händel-Gesellschaft (HG) and the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe (HHA), but the more recent Händel-Werke-Verzeichnis (HWV) publication is now commonly used to number his works. For example, Handel's Messiah can be referred to as: HG xlv, HHA i/17, or HWV 56. [1]
The trumpet repertoire consists of solo literature and orchestral or, more commonly, band parts written for the trumpet. Tracings its origins to 1500 BC, the trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Among the repertoire for the trumpet are the following works:
Handel's oratorio Messiah (1742) includes two well-known da capo arias, "He Was Despised" (for alto voice) and "The Trumpet Shall Sound" (for bass). J. S. Bach's cantata Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, BWV 51 (1730) begins with a flamboyant da capo aria for soprano, trumpet soloist, and strings.