Handel: "Hallelujah Chorus” [from Messiah] (Synthesized) скачать в хорошем качестве

Handel: "Hallelujah Chorus” [from Messiah] (Synthesized)

The use of headphones will greatly enhance the listening experience. With the "Hallelujah Chorus" as its centerpiece, George Frideric Handel's oratorio "Messiah" (HWV 56) is probably the most famous piece of classical music in the world, performed thousands of times every year at Christmas. Much has been written about the composition but here are a few things that may surprise you: 1. In 1741, Handel was heavily in debt following a string of musical failures. It seemed that his career was over and he may even be forced to go to debtors’ prison. Later that year Handel was given funding by a group of charities from Dublin, Ireland, to compose a new work for a benefit performance that would help free men from debtors’ prison. Handel would also receive his own commission for composing the work, which in turn helped him on his path to reversing his own misfortune. 2. Messiah wasn't originally intended for Christmas! The work premiered in Dublin in 1742 — at Easter time. In fact, Messiah was always intended for Lent. It was the Victorians who moved it to Christmas, to revive interest in that then-neglected holiday. Incidentally, the first London performance was a disaster. The fact that a religious work was being performed in a theatre, not a church, scandalized London audiences. Many believed that the work was “too exalted to be performed in a theater, particularly by secular singers.” Eventually, when Handel announced that he would give all the proceedings from the Messiah to charity, did the controversy die down. 3. Handel wrote the entire three-hour work in 24 days. Handel composed the piece in a white-hot frenzy of creativity in the summer of 1741. The complete 260-page oratorio, began on August 22, 1741, and was completed the final orchestration on September 14 of that year (and then wrote his oratorio Samson in the following three weeks). However, he did help himself to parts of earlier compositions he had written years before. The choruses "And He Shall Purify," "For Unto Us a Child Is Born" and "His Yoke Is Easy" were all lifted from little Italian love arias Handel had composed 20 years earlier. 4. Handel wept while he composed the Hallelujah Chorus and claimed he saw visions of angels while he worked on the piece. Was Handel a religious man? We haven't the faintest idea. We know almost nothing about Handel's personal and private life – which is surprising given he was one of the most famous men in England during his lifetime. But we do know that the compositional process moved him deeply. 5. Handel wrote Messiah for a fairly small ensemble. Handel's orchestra and choir was pretty small, maybe 20 musicians and 15 singers. It was the Imperial-mad Victorians in the late nineteenth century who filled the Crystal Palace with thousands of singers and hundreds of musicians, completely distorting everything Handel had written — and making for a long evening. At the lugubrious pace you had to take to get 5,000 singers to navigate Handel's choruses, a single performance could take five hours (complete with a dinner break). 6. Almost all the words for Messiah were taken from the Old Testament. Even though Messiah tells the story of Jesus — from birth (Part I) to death (Part II) to Resurrection and beyond (Part III), almost all the texts were taken from the Old Testament — not the New. A neat trick, to tell Jesus's life using texts written long before he lived. The reason Old Testament texts were chosen for Messiah is that the librettist who compiled them, Charles Jennens, was using Messiah to fight a battle with a religious sect of the time called the Deists, who denied the reality of prophecy in the Bible. Jennens wanted to prove that the story of Jesus was completely prefigured in the Old Testament. Thus, the text for Messiah. So, for example, the aria "He was despised, and rejected of men," one of Messiah's most famous, was not written about Jesus. It comes from Isaiah, chapter 53, verse three – written 700 years before Jesus was born. However, the text for “Hallelujah” (Part II, No. 21) comes from the book of Revelation in the New Testament. Revelation 19:6: “Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” Revelation 19:16: “And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.” Revelation 11:15 reads, “And he shall reign for ever and ever.” 7. A standing tradition. Audience members usually rise to their feet when the famous "Hallelujah" chorus begins. Supposedly King George II was so moved during the London premiere of the Messiah that he stood and then everyone else in the theater followed so as not to offend him. Unfortunately, with 15 tracks of vocals and instruments, my usual choice of using the MAMM visualization wasn’t able to properly display the instruments. Alternately I used MIDITrail (another free visualizer) which in this case, gives a clearer look at things, especially when layers of notes are played simultaneously.