framing his dramatic choruses in a most imposing architecture of decorative and impersonal character. His choruses are sometimes tragic scenes,[1] or comedy (see the Vaudeville),[2] sometimes genre pictures.[3] Handel knew most admirably how to weave in popular motives,[4] or to mingle the dance with the song.[5]
But what belongs chiefly to him—not that he invented it, but made the happiest use of it—is the musical architecture of solo and chorus alternating and intermingled. Purcell and the French composers had given him this idea. He attempted it in his earliest religious works, especially in his Birthday Ode for Queen Anne, 1713, where nearly every solo air is taken up again by the following chorus.[6] He had a great feeling for light and pleased himself by introducing in the middle of his choral masses, solo songs which soared up into the air like birds.[7] His dramatic genius knew, when required, how to draw from this combination the most astounding effects. Thus in the Passion after Brockes, 1716, where the dialogue of the Daughter of Sion and the chorus Eilt ihr angefochten Seelen, with its questions, its responses, its Æschylian interjections, served as
- ↑ Samson, Saul, Israel in Egypt.
- ↑ L'Allegro, Susanna, Belshazzar, Alexander Balus.
- ↑ Solomon, L'Allegro.
- ↑ Hercules, Saul, Semele, Alexander Balus, Solomon.
- ↑ I have noticed above the Chorus-Dances in Giulio Cesare, Orlando, Ariodante, Alcina. There are also veritable choral dances in Hercules, Belshazzar, Solomon, Saul (the Bell scene), Joshua (Sacred dance in Act II over a Ground-Bass).
- ↑ So in Athalia, Alexander's Feast, L'Allegro, Samson (Michel's rôle).
- ↑ Jubilate, Funeral Anthem.
