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And with the blast of Thy nostrils Hallelujah Surely he hath borne our grief's The people shall hear

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I am thrilled to share with you this evening Musica Sacra’s performance of George Frederick Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt. Israel in Egypt is a choral music lover’s dream come true. The drama of the story- the trials set upon the Egyptians by God, the escape of the Israelites through the parting of the Red Sea, the drowning of the pursuing Egyptians, and the resulting occasion for exultation and praise- begs for musical

amplification and Handel delivers it in a forthright and direct manner. The entire second half consists of hymns and paeans to God for His deliverance of the Israelites from bondage, providing Handel many opportunities to compose anthems of praise. More than any work in the choral-orchestral literature, Israel in Egypt teems with music for chorus; among its thirty-five sections only eleven are arias, duets, or recitatives.

Israel in Egypt has taken many different forms in its 250-year existence. Like Messiah, Handel wrote it in three sections. He had completed a funeral anthem on the death of Queen Caroline and saw the opportunity to incorporate it into a large-scale work, which could then be performed more broadly. He adapted the funeral anthem to form the first part of the oratorio by turning it into a long lamentation on the death of Joseph, the beloved son of Jacob, whose sale into slavery by his jealous older brothers began the bondage of the Israelites in Egypt. Handel composed part three, Moses’ Song, next and the middle part, Exodus, last. The oratorio first presented in 1739 with those three parts had a tepid reception. For the rest of his life, Handel revised and edited Israel in Egypt, but it was never successfully received in his lifetime. We present a version based on his second performance, in which he omitted the first part. This change created a relentless driving force that carries the work from first chorus to last.

Israel in Egypt bears many similarities to the Messiah. The librettos to both were provided by Charles Jenniens. Unlike Handel’s other oratorios, or unstaged operas, Israel in Egypt and the Messiah, which was written four years later, have no specific dramatic roles for soloists. There is no Moses or Pharaoh, no Jesus or Mary. Rather, choral movements provide the dramatic impetus to the story. Choral movements abound in each, but particularly in Israel in Egypt; the first part has only two short recitatives and one aria. The story itself, rather than being an expansive libretto postulated upon the Biblical story, is relayed through paraphrases and direct quotes from Biblical verses. Each of the two oratorios tells the story central to its respective Biblical testament; Israel in Egypt recounts that of the Old Testament: the story of the Exodus, or the Jews’

departure from Egypt. There are musical references between the two works as well. One of the ways in which Handel, like Bach, composed so prolifically was to borrow music from prior compositions. Parts of Israel in Egypt show up later in the Messiah; there is a harmonic progression limned by a choral passage in And with the blast of Thy

nostrils that Handel quotes literally in his Hallelujah Chorus. Messiah’s Surely he

hath borne our grief's unabashedly borrows the thematic material from the first segment

of The people shall hear.

I find Israel in Egypt more rewarding to listen to than the Messiah because of the drama inherent to the tale. Handel’s musical settings in Israel in Egypt bring out the emotions which the events relayed in Exodus and Moses’ Song inspire; they even allude to some that at first consideration are not evident. It’s a psychological dissection of the story as Handel interpreted it. All in all, it’s a thrilling ride.

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Tenor Recitative: Now there arose a new king over Egypt

This straightforward recitative, with text from the beginning of Exodus, sets the stage for the action to begin. As you may know from reading the end of Genesis in the Bible, the early years of the Jews’ exile in Egypt were good ones.

Chorus: And the children of Israel sighed:

Handel interrupts the opening solo by “sighing” chords in the orchestra. The opening statement, lugubriously slow and in a minor key, conveys the depressed state of the Israelites. A faster countersubject by contrast illustrates the busy-ness of their having to serve the Egyptians.

Tenor Recitative: The text, once again from the beginning of Exodus, brings the

narrative to the beginning of the plagues.

Chorus: They loathed to drink of the river

The opening fugal subject is extremely unusual. Downward leaps by the interval of sevenths are interspersed with upward leaps of octaves and sinuous minor seconds and thirds. Through these large non-consonant and therefore ugly intervals Handel creates a brilliant lurching line, implying both the unsteady footing caused by nausea and a

situation which would induce nausea. The melismatic countersubject, in which there is a long melodic phrase setting the word “waters,“ weaves up and down by stepwise motion to depict the appalling rivers of blood.

Alto Aria: Their land brought forth frogs

The violin figures of arpeggiated dotted eighths followed by sixteenths represent the leaping of the frogs.

Chorus: He spake the word

What wonderfully descriptive music Handel writes for this text! The movement opens with the men in unison intoning “He spake the word” in solemn quarter notes, thereby suggesting the voice of God. They are answered by the women’s voices singing “and there came all manner of flies” in short busy notes accompanied by extremely fast stepwise rising and falling thirds in the violins; the busy rhythms in the treble register create a musical representation of the buzzing of the flies. Handel then repeats “he spake the word” and this time the women sing: “and there came lice in all their quarters.” With this repetition of “He spake the word,” Handel alludes to the multiple acts of creation in Genesis; this time, however, the acts are not constructive, but destructive. After a third statement of the men followed by the women conjoining the statement of the arrival of flies and locusts, the movement evolves into a call and response between two equal choirs of mixed voices. At the end of the movement, however, the momentum thus built up is halted by the choirs’ truncating the opening line to “He spake;” this calls attention to the final insectile visitation by the locusts.

Chorus: He gave them hailstones for rain

The drama in this piece starts with the orchestral preamble: a calm beginning which becomes increasingly frenetic with a rising tessitura of the chords and the faster note

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values making up the lines. I’m reminded of the visitation by locusts as described by Laura Ingalls Wilder in her autobiographical “Little House” series: what starts out as a faint and unremarkable cloud on the horizon draws nearer while becoming more ominous, until the onlookers are overwhelmed.

Chorus: He sent a thick darkness over all the land

Handel equates darkness with silence in his musical setting of this text; he intrudes upon the silence with his music as little as possible. The low tessitura of the homophonic chords wherein the vocal parts intone the text as one, is one musical manifestation of this darkness. The other is the reluctance of the singers to even express the line; the vocal parts sing fragments of the text one at a time, creating a choral rendition of recitative.

Chorus: He smote all the first born of Egypt

Handel does not shrink from the brutality of this act within his music. The violins form chords that slash the silence at every other beat, driving home the unrelenting harshness of the murder of all of Egypt’s first born.

Chorus: But as for his people

The contrast of this movement with the prior one is stunning; Handel replaces the d minor tonality of the previous one with D major and its duple meter with a triple meter. The major key, triple meter, and musical motifs create a pastorale; a musical form associated with shepherds and embracing their characteristics of rustic simplicity. Handel includes a purely instrumental pastorale in his Messiah as the introduction to the section in which Gabriel announces Jesus’ birth to the shepherds. This pastorale, inspired perhaps by the line “he led them forth like sheep,” suggests the departure of the Israelites from their urban captivity into the wild, but it also alludes to their naiveté regarding the price of their freedom. The characteristics of this movement that identify it as a

pastorale include the instruments moving together melodically in parallel thirds; the use of a drone, or long note in the bass; and the echoed repetition of short phrases, and the triple meter. These conventions have a long history in Western European music, having been established by the Italian composer Corelli and his contemporaries for Christmas music in the beginning of the 17th century.

Chorus: Egypt was glad when they departed

That Handel has compassion for the Egyptians as well as the Israelites is manifested by this fugal subject in the longer note values of the stile antico in a minor tonality. These devices interpret the Egyptians’ gladness as relief that their travails at the hand of the Israelite god are at an end. The dotted figures on the phrase “for the fear of them fell upon them” causes a musical trembling to represent the body’s response to fear.

Chorus: He rebuked the Red Sea

Handel divides the sentence He rebuked the Red Sea and it was dried up into two parts, both sung homophonically by eight-voice choir. He sets the first phrase in a forte

dynamic and a high vocal tessitura so that the sound is overwhelming. The next phrase is sung in a low vocal tessitura at a piano dynamic. This contrast has two effects. The first phrase represents a wall of water that is then dried up as represented by the second

phrase. In addition, the first phrase sounds more like the voice of God in his command, while the setting of the second phrase suggests the awe that such an impossible thing could happen.

Chorus: He led them through the deep

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in longer note values and a countersubject in faster note values. The subject line of quarter notes rises by stepwise motion only to fall a seventh on the word “deep.” It then resumes its stepwise rise from where it landed until it frisks on eighth notes on the words “as through a wilderness.” Handel not only illustrates the word “deep” with the fall of the seventh, but he also creates a faltering in the line that suggests a losing of the way. The continuing scalar rise then conveys a second try and the faster eighth notes provide a fanfare in celebration of having arrived safely.

Chorus: But the waters overwhelmed their enemies

Handel portrays the Israelites as being luridly gleeful that the Egyptians drown. He achieves this effect of obnoxious gloating by breaking up the text, so that “not one” is constantly reiterated like a schoolyard taunt. You can hear the waters overwhelming their enemies in the incessant tattoo of the timpani throughout the movement

Chorus: And Israel saw that great work Chorus: And believed the Lord

These 2 movements together call to mind a Purcell verse anthem: a short homophonic introduction is followed by a section of imitative counterpoint. I find it very interesting that Handel ends the Exodus with this somber movement. Its sobriety, a result of a c minor tonality and slow note values, has many implications. It creates a prayerful atmosphere; it also refers to the emotional and physical exhaustion of the Israelites after their ordeal, much like Jacob’s exhaustion after wrestling with the angel. Most

surprising, however, it emphasizes not the Israelites’ salvation at the hand of their god, but their realization that a god able to wield such deadly power over their enemies is indeed a god to be feared for what he might do to them if he so chose.

Chorus: Moses and the children of Israel Chorus: I will sing unto the Lord

The brief movement opening Moses’ Song sets the stage for one of the most thrilling fugues ever penned by Handel or any composer. As with so many of his fugal movements in this oratorio, Handel has a subject that is grand and sweeping and a countersubject that is fast and, in this case, ebullient, as befits the text: “he hath triumphed gloriously.” The elongated line setting the text “I will sing unto the Lord” consummately embodies a hymn to God, especially at the end of the movement, when Handel brings each of the four voices in sequentially, creating a magnificent stretto, made possible by the bass declamation of the subject in longer note values, a

compositional device called augmentation.

Soprano Duet: The Lord is my strength and my song

This lovely, if nonspecific, duet praises God. Handel worried that one of the reasons the first performance of Israel in Egypt was not better received was its dearth of arias and duets for soloists. Every revision he made tinkered with the number and placement of the solos.

Chorus: He is my God

Chorus: And I will exalt Him

Handel repeats the format of homophonic introduction followed by contrapuntal texture. He fosters the sense of exultation by developing the musical material more extensively than he does in some of his earlier movements.

Bass duet: The Lord is a man of war

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Whatever financial constraints Handel may have been under, he apparently did not want to sacrifice the effect of manly strength achieved by this vocal scoring. In addition his downward scalar melismas marvelously illustrate the casting of the Egyptians into the sea.

Chorus: The depths have covered them

The music in this movement expresses a wonderful serenity. It brings to my mind an image of the Israelites looking down through calm waters at the Egyptians peacefully at rest.

Chorus: Thy right hand O Lord has become glorious Chorus: And in the greatness

Chorus: Thou sendest forth thy wrath

Handel creates the celebratory nature that dominates the first part of this three-part section by using a C major tonality, high tessitura of the vocal parts, and exuberant thematic material. In the second part, just eight measures long, the chorus declaims the text in the relative minor of a. It acts as a closure to the first part and an introduction to the third part, a fugue written in the key of a minor with the tempo alle breve (half note receiving the beat). In Handel’s original score, the trombone parts are appended at the end of the manuscript. Whether he planned to include them all along or added them later for additional color, their entrance with the entrance of the second chorus perfectly embodies in orchestral timbre the wrath of God. This three-part section is the sort of ending to Exodus I would have expected, interpreting the wrath of God as unequivocally good for the Israelites.

Chorus: And with the blast of thy nostrils

Once again, Handel writes inspired music to depict the Israelites’ recap of the events whereby they escaped across the Red Sea. The stepwise rising first theme ended by the drop of a fourth or fifth represent respectively the inhale and exhale, the inhale

interrupted briefly by a melisma of 16th notes to both depict and set the word “blast.” The next theme, set to “the waters were gathered together,” starts with a melodic undulation suggesting water and the repetition of one note to represent the water gathering together. The third phrase, “the floods stood upright as an heap,” has two settings. In the first one the line rises to express the waters rising. The second expression reiterates the same tone in relatively slow quarter notes; one sees the water standing up, row upon row, as sheaves of wheat. The final phrase, “the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea,” also has a unison intonation, this time low in the bass range, the depth of the choral sound. Handel then resets it on a line of falling thirds, which stop on the word “congealed”: a musical cascade, which ends in unison to convey the congealing.

Tenor Aria: The enemy said: I will pursue

Another wonderfully descriptive aria. The fast tempo and declamative singing, where each syllable gets only one note, and the multiple reiterations of each short clause portray the singer as breathless from both physical exertion and frustration.

Soprano Aria: Thou didst blow with the wind

The accompaniment to this aria by wind instruments as well as their long flowing lines do a wonderful job musically depicting the wind’s blowing. The soprano’s imitation of these long flowing lines is interrupted by large descending intervals setting “they sank.”

Chorus: Who is like unto thee? Chorus: The earth swallowed them

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Again a homophonic introduction followed by a fugue. This time the introduction ends with elongated note values: a stretching of the tempo to allude to the stretching out of God’s right hand.

Alto-Tenor Duet: Thou in thy mercy hast led forth thy people

Handel uses two musical ideas in this duet. The first theme, a descent of a fifth in a minor tonality by stepwise motion in slurred eighth-note groupings of two, is a musical manifestation of mercy. The second theme starts with stepwise motion of a rising sixth in quarter notes, suggesting God’s sure guidance of the Israelites.

Chorus: The people shall hear

Handel composes this movement as though it were three movements, each with its own theme and character. The dotted rhythms of the orchestral accompaniment and largely homophonic texture of the opening section convey the power of God, which inspires fear. The melting away of the inhabitants of Canaan is depicted in the second section with a melisma of a falling third on the word “melt.” In the final section the hitherto minor tonality gives way to the major: a musical metaphor of the sun breaking through after the storm to represent the ease of the Israelites’ inhabiting the land of Canaan.

Alto Aria: Thou shalt bring them in

The promise of the Israelites’ safe arrival in the promised land is assured in this beautifully placid aria.

Chorus:The Lord shall reign

Tenor Recitative:

Chorus:The Lord shall reign

Tenor Recitative:

Chorus:The Lord shall reign

Soprano and Chorus: Sing ye to the Lord

Handel, having associated the Israelites’ crossing of the Red Sea with their safe arrival in Canaan in the prior movements, uses the recitatives to return to the events of the

Israelites’ escape. Each recitative is heralded and answered by jubilant homophony setting “the Lord shall reign for ever and ever.” The third time we hear it, Handel has it answer Miriam’s supplication to sing to the Lord, for “the horse and his chariot hath He thrown into the sea.” From there Handel artfully segues back into the fugue with which he opened Moses’ Song, providing a symmetry to the whole as well as a grand ending.

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