Messiah Part II

Messiah, the English-language oratorio composed by George Frideric Handel in 1741, is structured in three parts. This listing covers Part II in a table and comments on individual movements, reflecting the relation of the musical setting to the text. Part I begins with the prophecy of the Messiah and his birth, shows the annunciation to the shepherds and reflects the Messiah's deeds on earth. Part II covers the Passion in nine movements including the oratorio's longest movement, an air for alto He was despised, then mentions death, resurrection, ascension, and reflects the spreading of the Gospel and its rejection. The part is concluded by a scene called "God's Triumph" that culminates in the Hallelujah chorus. Part III of the oratorio concentrates on Paul's teaching of the resurrection of the dead and Christ's glorification in heaven.

Messiah, the oratorio

The libretto by Charles Jennens is entirely drawn from the Bible, mostly from the King James Bible, whereas several psalms are taken from the Book of Common Prayer. The librettist commented: "... the Subject excells every other Subject. The Subject is Messiah...". Messiah differs from Handel's other oratorios by telling no story, instead offering reflections on different aspects of the Christian Messiah. Christopher Hogwood comments:

Structure and concept

The oratorio's structure follows the liturgical year; Part I corresponding with Advent, Christmas and the life of Jesus, Part II with Lent, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost, Part III with the end of the church year, dealing with the end of time, the Resurrection of the dead and Christ's glorification in heaven. The sources are drawn mostly from the Old Testament. Even the birth and death of Jesus are told in the words of the prophet Isaiah, the most prominent source of the libretto. The only true scene of the oratorio is taken from the Gospel of Luke, the annunciation to the shepherds. The imagery of shepherd and lamb features prominently, in the aria "He shall feed His flock like a shepherd", the only extended piece to talk about the Messiah on earth, in the opening of Part II, "Behold the Lamb of God", in the chorus "All we like sheep", and in the closing chorus of the work, "Worthy is the Lamb". Occasionally verses from different biblical sources are combined in one movement, but more often a coherent text section is set in different consecutive movements, such as the first "scene", the annunciation of Christian salvation, as a sequence of three movements, recitative, aria and chorus.

Music

When Handel composed Messiah in London, he was already a successful and experienced composer of Italian operas. He had started in 1713 to also compose sacred music on English texts, such as the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate. He set many oratorios on English libretti. In Messiah he used practically the same musical means as for those works, namely a structure based on chorus and solo singing. Only a few movements are a duet or a combination of solo and chorus. The solos are typically a combination of recitative and aria. The arias are called Air or Song, some of them have da capo form, but rarely in a strict sense, repeating a first section after a sometimes contrasting middle section. Handel finds various ways to use the format freely, in order to convey the text. The movements marked "Recitative" are "secco", only accompanied by the basso continuo. Recitatives marked "Accompagnato" are accompanied by additional string instruments. Handel uses four voice parts in both solo and chorus, soprano, alto, tenor and bass. 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. Two trumpets and timpani highlight selected movements, such as the closing movements of Part II, Hallelujah. Handel uses a cantus firmus on long repeated notes especially to illustrate God's speech and majesty, such as "King of Kings" in the Hallelujah chorus.

General notes

The following table is organized by movement numbers. There are two major systems of numbering the movements of Messiah: the historic Novello edition of 1959, and the Bärenreiter edition of 1965 in the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe. Not counting some short recitatives as separate movements, there are therefore 47 movements. In the table below, the Novello number is given first and is the index for the notes to individual movements in the "movements" section, then the Bärenreiter number.
To emphasise the movements in which the oboes and the rarely used trumpets and timpani play, the summary below does not mention the regular basso continuo and the strings in movements. Details on the development of keys, different tempo markings times within a movement are given in notes on the individual movements.

Part II summary

Nov	Bär	Title / First line	Form	Tempo marking	Scoring	Time	Key
22	19	Behold the Lamb of God	Chorus	Largo	ob		G minor
23	20	He was despised	Air, alto	Largo			E-flat major
24	21	Surely, He hath borne our griefs	Chorus	Largo e staccato	ob		A-flat major
25	22	And with His stripes we are healed	Chorus	Alla breve, moderato	ob		F minor
26	23	All we like sheep	Chorus	Allegro moderato	ob		F major
27	24	All they that see Him, laugh	Accompagnato, tenor	Larghetto			B-flat minor
28	25	He trusted in God	Chorus	Allegro	ob		C minor
29	26	Thy rebuke hath broken His heart	Accompagnato, Tenor	Largo			various
30	27	Behold, and see	Arioso, Tenor	Largo e piano			E minor
31	28	He was cut off out	Accompagnato, tenor or soprano				B minor
32	29	But Thou didst not leave his soul	Air, tenor or soprano	Andante larghetto			A major
33	30	Lift up your heads	Chorus SSATB	A tempo ordinario	ob		F major
34		Unto which of the angels	Recitative, tenor				D minor
35	31	Let all the angels of God	Chorus	Allegro	ob		D major
36	32	Thou art gone up on high	Air, alto, soprano, or bass	Allegro larghetto			D minor / G minor
37	33	The Lord gave the word	Chorus	Andante allegro	ob		B-flat major
38	34	How beautiful are the feet	Duet, alto or soprano & alto Chorus or Air, soprano or alto	Andante	ob		D minor / G minor / C minor
39	35	Their sound is gone out	Arioso, tenor or chorus	Andante larghetto			F major / E-flat major
40	36	Why do the nations so furiously rage	Air, bass	Allegro			C major
41	37	Let us break their bonds asunder	Chorus	Allegro e staccato	ob		C major
42		He that dwelleth in heaven	Recitative, Tenor				A major
43	38	Thou shalt break them	Air, tenor	Andante			A minor
44	39	Hallelujah	Chorus	Allegro	tr ti ob		D major

Part II movements

Scene 1

is the longest scene of the oratorio and reflects the Passion, in Jennens' words "Christ's Passion; the scourging and the agony on the cross", in nine individual movements, including the longest one, the Air for alto "He was despised". Part II is the only part opened by a chorus, and continues to be dominated by choral singing. Block observes that the emphasis on the Passion differs from modern western popular Christianity, which prefers to stress the nativity of the Messiah.

22

Behold the Lamb of God
The opening chorus "Behold the Lamb of God" begins like a French overture in G minor, a key of "tragic presentiment", according to Christopher Hogwood. The continuo drops an octave, then the violins rise an octave, to express "Behold". After only three instrumental measures the voices proclaim the Testimony of John the Baptist,, which recalls Isaiah 53. The alto begins, followed after half a measure each by the soprano, the bass, and finally the tenor. After the initial rise, the melody falls in dotted rhythms, but rises on "that taketh away the sin of the world". The melody shows similarity to the beginning of "He shall feed his flock", but "sharpened" from major to minor, from triplets to dotted rhythm, and by the octave leap in the beginning.

23

He was despised
The text in this movement comes from Isaiah's fourth song about the Man of Sorrows: "He was despised, rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief", indicating that "the Messiah will play a substitutionary sacrificial role on behalf of his people". Handel gives the pitiful description to the alto solo in the longest movement of the oratorio in terms of duration. It is a da capo aria, showing two contrasting moods, set in E-flat major in the first section, C minor in the middle section. The vocal line begins with an ascending fourth on "he was" and adds another one on "despi-sed", ending as a sigh. The signal of a fourth has been observed by musicologist Rudolf Steglich as a unifying motif of the oratorio. Handel breaks the beginning of the text up to a stammering "He was despised, – despised and rejected, – rejected of men,... – despi-sed – rejected", the words interspersed with rests as long as the words, as if exhausted. Soft sighing motifs of the violins, an echo of the singing, drop into these rests. Hogwood interprets the unaccompanied passages as emphasizing "Christ's abandonment". The middle section is also full of dramatic rests, but now the voice is set on a ceaseless agitated pattern of fast dotted notes in the instruments, illustrating the hits of the smiters in text from the third song, where the words appear in the first person: "He gave his back – to the smiters –... and His cheeks – to them – that plucked off the hair. – He hid – not his face – from shame – and spitting."