Page 121 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

thereby establishing the tradition of the audience standing for the “Hallelujah” chorus—for no one sat while the king stood. Indeed, this movement would serve well as a royal coronation march, though in Messiah, of course, it is Christ the King who is being crowned.
Listening Cue
George Frideric Handel, Messiah, “Hallelujah” chorus (1741) Genre: Oratorio chorus
Download 4
what to listen for: The masterful use of contrasting textures (monophonic, homophonic, and polyphonic) to create drama—for at the heart of drama lies vivid contrast
reAD . . . a detailed Listening Guide of this selection online. LiSTeN TO . . . this selection streaming online.
WATCH . . . an Active Listening Guide of this selection online. WATCH . . . a special animation of this selection online.
DO . . . Listening Exercise 6.3, Handel, “Hallelujah” chorus, online.
The “Hallelujah” chorus is a strikingly effective work because the large choral force delivers a variety of excit- ing textures. In fact, however, Handel’s chorus for the original Dublin Messiah was much smaller than those used today (Figure 6.11). It included only four singers on each of the alto, tenor, and bass parts, and six choirboys singing the soprano. The orchestra was equally slight, with only about sixteen players. For the Foundling Hos- pital performances of the 1750s, however, the orchestra grew to thirty-five. Then, over the next hundred years, the chorus progressively swelled to as many as four thousand with a balancing orchestra of five hundred, in what were billed as “Festivals of the People”—a precursor of the modern Messiah sing-alongs we have today.
Figure 6.11
Eighteenth-century London was a place of biting satire. Here,
in William Hogarth’s The Oratorio Singer (1732), the chorus of an oratorio is the object of parody. But there is an element of truth here: the chorus for the first performance of Messiah, for example, numbered about eighteen males, with choirboys (front row) taking the soprano part. Women, however, sang soprano and alto for the vocal solos.
george frideric handel (1685–1759) 99 Copyright 201 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
56797_ch06_ptg01.indd 99 29/08/14
3:34 PM
Lebrecht Music & Arts
<