Text Painting in Handel
Handel’s Messiah is a piece to be studied for many different reasons. The music is beautiful, the melodies brilliant, but most of all, the text painting is so apparent that it is hard not to comment on it. In the first 8 movements of the Messiah the text painting is a prominent characteristic for analysis. In each movement there are many examples of Handel’s brilliance in explaining the words, taken directly from the bible, using the music. In movement two, “Comfort Ye My People,” there were a few words that stood out because they were given such musical importance. One of these words was iniquity. Every occurrence of this word, meaning wickedness, was flagged by 7th chords or diminished chords and in one case by a chord that I couldn’t even figure out. This shows the wickedness of the word and the fact that Handel wanted to drill this word into the heads of the listeners. Another word was warfare. On this word, Handel wrote sequences starting at measure 21 to show the building and intensity of the warfare of which this section is talking about. The word is also set to fast running notes which can be seen as the fast running and on going pace of the warfare. This movement is a very g
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Tidings Zion, Day Coming, Saith Lord, Glory Lord, Ye People, Exalted Aria, Handels Messiah, text painting, Movement Nine, word set, handels messiah, text painting piece, , painting piece, section word, word set fast, piece starts, set words, eighth notes, set fast, examples text painting, notes fluctuating pitch, text set,
Approximate Word count = 1534
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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