HandelŽs Messiah: A Rhetorical Guide

This is a book for all lovers of Handel's Messiah, whether performer or listener, choir member or director, solo singer or orchestral musician.

The story of the creation of Messiah is followed by a Glose unpicking and rhetorical analysis of the biblical text as presented to Handel by his friend Charles Jennens. Then Handel's setting of the text to music is described, showing how devices such as word-painting, repetition, questions and exclamations portray and enhance the Christian message and add to its impact on the listener. This is followed by a performer's guide to delivering Handel's ideas using rhetorical techniques of delivery, and the book finishes with a review of the audience's reception of this great work, put into the context of contemporary ideas about what constituted the sublime.

Rhetorical ideas from Classical Roman and Greek writers are used alongside texts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which were written to help people to read and understand the Bible in the Protestant Church tradition. Judy Tarling's book The Weapons of Rhetoric, a Guide for Musicians and Audiences (2004) introduced musicians to the connection between performing music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the techniques of oratory. Since its publication Weapons has become the standard introduction to this subject world-wide. In this book she uses a similar approach but focuses on one great well-known work, revealing many layers of rhetorical craft beneath the familiar music.

CONTENIDO:

Author's Preface

The Introduction:
A Note on the Musical Examples
Rhetoric - the Sources
Editions and Previous Publications
Acknowledgcmcnts


- Part one - Invention
1.1 The Invention of Handel's Messiah
Jennens' Text Craft
The Word-Book
Pcrformances of Messiah until Handel's Death
1.2 Structure and Performance
Structural Silences
The Text Part One
The Text Part Two
The Text Part Three
Length
1.3 Figures of Rhetoric
The Rhetoric Books
Copia - How Many Ways?
Comparison
Catalogue of Figures
1.4 Exclamations and Questions
Exclamations
Questions
1.5 Word Painting
Earth and Heaven
Crowds
The Pastoral
Fire
Darkness and Light
Concord and Discord
Soothing
Anger
1.6 Decorum - Choice of Means
Size and Decorum
1.7 Second Thoughts
`Hallelujah'
'And with His Stripes' - `All we, like Sheep'
'Why do the Nations'
`If God be for us'
`Ev'ry Valley'

- Part Two - Delivery
2.1 Decorum - Tone of Voice
Tones of Voice
The `Speaking' Style
2.2 Emphasis
The Epitizeuxis
Tessitura
Length of Note
Articulation -Marks
Slurs
Variety
Length of Phrase
Harmony, Intervals
2.3 Dynamics
Decorum
Tessitura
Affect
Repeat piano?
2.4 Tempo
Numbers and Words
Adagio
Andante
Largo
Tempo Relationships
Pauses
Recitative
2.5 Rhythm
Affect of the Length of Notes
Variety of Phrase Length
Dotted Notes
Syncopations
Repeated Semiquavers
Mixed Rhythms
Iamb and Trachee
Anapaest
Dactyl
2.6 Silence
Aposiopesis
`Suspiro' in Pathetic Affects
Rhythmic Silence - the 'Loud Rest'
Silences of Articulation
2.7 The Choruses


- Part Three - The Audience
The Audience
The Sublime
A Peroration
Bibliography:
Messiah Editions and Performance Materials
Internet Sources
Index to Movements
General Index