Handel- 'And The Glory of the Lord'
Background and StyleAnd The Glory is from the Oratorio Messiah by George Frederick Handel. The 'Messiah' is an Oratorio – a work for vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra that uses religious text from the Bible.
It would have traditionally been performed at Easter, but is now often performed at Christmas. Handel composed it in only three weeks in 1741 and it was first performed in Dublin. The whole work ‘Messiah’ is a huge work in three sections that lasts nearly 3 hours. Within each section there are lots of shorter pieces (movements) that include Arias & Recitatives (solo songs/duets), Choruses (with the choir) and some instrumental pieces. The piece we are studying ‘And the glory of the Lord’ is the first chorus in the whole work. |
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Style - Baroque Features (general features)
• Ornamented melody • Diatonic chords/harmony • Basso continuo (literally continuous bass – play chordal support with the bass line usually played by the cello) • Baroque orchestra – strings play the melody, a few woodwind, brass and timpani used. • Prevalence of one mood or ‘affection’ • Terraced dynamics - contrasting volumes on two levels, loud and soft |
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InstrumentsSATB choir accompanied by string orchestra with basso continuo. In our recording the continuo is played by cello, and harpsichord, however other versions feature cello, double bass and organ.
Basso Continuo always features a keyboard instrument (organ or harpsichord in this instance) plus a bass instrument (cello and/ or double bass in this instance, however other pieces of music can include lutes). SATB- at the time of writing all of these parts would have been sung by males; boys and men. If a man is singing the alto (short for contralto) we would call this voice the countertenor, not alto, with the men using their falsetto voice. |
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Structure
Unlike many of our other pieces, this one has no set structure. This chorus is based on three lines of text that repeat throughout the whole song.
The piece uses four main musical ideas, one for each line of text (the first line is split into two phrases, hence four ideas), and these four ideas are combined in different ways to create the movement.
Occasionally Handel uses instrumental sections to break up the vocal ideas, these are called ritornellos (a little return= returning section).
- And the Glory of the Lord shall be revealed
- And all flesh shall see it together
- For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it
The piece uses four main musical ideas, one for each line of text (the first line is split into two phrases, hence four ideas), and these four ideas are combined in different ways to create the movement.
Occasionally Handel uses instrumental sections to break up the vocal ideas, these are called ritornellos (a little return= returning section).
Melody
Syllabic Features a perfect 4th
Melismatic Melodic sequence
Repetitive leap followed by stepwise movement
Pedal Slow Appears in the bass first |
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- Handel introduces each ide simply, usually in one part, then weaves them into the rest of the music as other parts join in, often imitating each other and overlapping
- Lots of imitation in the vocal parts – when one or more parts copies an idea first heard in another part
- Most of the singing is syllabic (one note per syllable) but the word ‘revealed’ is melismatic – it has a melisma (when a syllable is sung over several notes).
- All the parts keep to a modest pitch range. There is lots of imitation in the vocal parts – when one or more parts copies an idea first heard in another part. Most of the singing is syllabic (one note per syllable) but the word ‘revealed’ is melismatic – it has a melisma (when a syllable is sung over several notes)
Texture |
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- Mixture of homophonic (1 minute 4 seconds) and polyphonic (50 seconds)
- Also monophonic when only one part is singing at the start of lines (41 seconds)
- The string parts support and accompany the vocal lines and very often double the vocal lines. If you look at the bass (vocal) part you can see the nearly all its notes are identical to the Basso Continuo line
- Sometimes, two or more vocal parts sing in unison (exactly the same notes) or together in harmony (same rhythm and words, different notes)
- The continuo players (cello, double bass and organ) play throughout – the other instruments play most of the time but there are some short sections where the other strings drop out and only the continuo players accompany the singers
- The texture is also homorhythmic at the end with all parts playing/singing to help give a sense of finality
DynamicsThere are hardly any dynamics marked in the score, and those that are marked are only p and f - this is typical of baroque music that rarely has crescendos or diminuendos marked (actually has very few dynamic markings at all).
In the recording, only contrasts of p and f are used. Terraced dynamics- stepped dynamics |
Tonality and Harmony
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Tempo & Rhythm
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