Georg Friedrich Händel (1685 - 1759) was a German,
later British, baroque composer who spent the bulk of
his career in London, becoming well known for his
operas, oratorios, anthems, and organ concertos. Handel
received important training in Halle and worked as a
composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London
in 1712; he became a naturalised British subject in
1727. He was strongly influenced both by the great
composers of the Italian Baroque and by the
middle-German polyphonic choral ...(+)
Georg Friedrich Händel (1685 - 1759) was a German,
later British, baroque composer who spent the bulk of
his career in London, becoming well known for his
operas, oratorios, anthems, and organ concertos. Handel
received important training in Halle and worked as a
composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London
in 1712; he became a naturalised British subject in
1727. He was strongly influenced both by the great
composers of the Italian Baroque and by the
middle-German polyphonic choral tradition.
Messiah (HWV 56) is an English-language oratorio
composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel. The text
was compiled from the King James Bible and the
Coverdale Psalter by Charles Jennens. It was first
performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742 and received its
London premiere nearly a year later. After an initially
modest public reception, the oratorio gained in
popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known
and most frequently performed choral works in Western
music.
Handel's reputation in England, where he had lived
since 1712, had been established through his
compositions of Italian opera. He turned to English
oratorio in the 1730s in response to changes in public
taste; Messiah was his sixth work in this genre.
Although its structure resembles that of opera, it is
not in dramatic form; there are no impersonations of
characters and no direct speech. Instead, Jennens's
text is an extended reflection on Jesus as the Messiah
called Christ. The text begins in Part I with
prophecies by Isaiah and others, and moves to the
annunciation to the shepherds, the only "scene" taken
from the Gospels. In Part II, Handel concentrates on
the Passion of Jesus and ends with the Hallelujah
chorus. In Part III he covers Paul's teachings on the
resurrection of the dead and Christ's glorification in
heaven.
Handel wrote Messiah for modest vocal and instrumental
forces, with optional settings for many of the
individual numbers. In the years after his death, the
work was adapted for performance on a much larger
scale, with giant orchestras and choirs. In other
efforts to update it, its orchestration was revised and
amplified, such as Mozart's Der Messias. In the late
20th and early 21st centuries, the trend has been
towards reproducing a greater fidelity to Handel's
original intentions, although "big Messiah" productions
continue to be mounted.
The music for Messiah was completed in 24 days of swift
composition. Having received Jennens's text some time
after 10 July 1741, Handel began work on it on 22
August. His records show that he had completed Part I
in outline by 28 August, Part II by 6 September and
Part III by 12 September, followed by two days of
"filling up" to produce the finished work on 14
September. This rapid pace was seen by Jennens not as a
sign of ecstatic energy but rather as "careless
negligence", and the relations between the two men
would remain strained, since Jennens "urged Handel to
make improvements" while the composer stubbornly
refused. The autograph score's 259 pages show some
signs of haste such as blots, scratchings-out, unfilled
bars and other uncorrected errors, but according to the
music scholar Richard Luckett the number of errors is
remarkably small in a document of this length. The
original manuscript for Messiah is now held in the
British Library's music collection. It is scored for
two trumpets, timpani, two oboes, two violins, viola,
and basso continuo.
The numbering of the movements shown here is in
accordance with the Novello vocal score (1959), edited
by Watkins Shaw, which adapts the numbering earlier
devised by Ebenezer Prout. Other editions count the
movements slightly differently; the Bärenreiter
edition of 1965, for example, does not number all the
recitatives and runs from 1 to 47. The division into
parts and scenes is based upon the 1743 word-book
prepared for the first London performance. The scene
headings are given as Burrows summarised the scene
headings by Jennens.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_(Handel)).
Although originally created for Baroque Orchestra, I
created this Arrangement of "His yoke is easy" from
"Messiah" (HWV 56 Mvt. 15) for Winds (Flute, Oboe,
French Horn & Bassoon) & Strings (2 Violins, Viola &
Cello).
