According to the custom of the time, if the king stood, so did you. It is said that at the work’s London premiere in 1743, the King of England, George II, was present, and when he heard the Hallelujah Chorus he rose to his feet in excitement. One of the most well-known practices-and one with a rather curious origin-is the audience standing upon hearing the Hallelujah Chorus. And with that chorus comes many traditions: sing-along performances, its affiliation with the holiday season, and its use in television and popular culture. This work contains many famous arias and choruses that can stand on their own as important works of the classical canon, but probably none are as notable as the end of the Second Part, the Hallelujah Chorus. All three parts are made up of scenes which consist of solo arias, recitatives, instrumental movements, and choruses. Part I is the birth and miracle of Jesus, Part II is the Passion and Jesus’ death (famously ending with the Hallelujah Chorus), and Part III is Jesus glorified in Heaven. Not quite a full-staged opera, this oratorio features soloists, four-part chorus, and an orchestra of paired trumpets, two oboes, first and second violins, viola, basso continuo, and timpani.įinished in 1741, Messiah is in three parts and depicts the life of Jesus. Traditionally performed at Christmas time, George Frideric Handel’s Messiah is arguably one of the most performed and celebrated works of the orchestral repertoire. With the eventual entry of trumpets and drums, the chorus reaches a magnificent apex that conductor Christopher Hogwood described as “the final storming of heaven.Notes by TŌN bassoonist Philip McNaughton The final cadence ends on dominant harmony, setting up a powerful harmonic segue into the “Amen” that follows.īeginning gently and humbly, the “Amen” builds into a majestic blend of counterpoint and chorale. The two parallel stanzas of “Worthy Is the Lamb” are in D major and A major.Īt the words “Blessing and honor, power, and glory,” the fugue theme includes repeated notes that emphasize the idea of eternity, and also recall the repeated notes from “For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it” in the oratorio’s opening chorus.Īt the chorus’s conclusion, the words “forever and ever” are repeated 16 times, using the same rhythm as the setting of those same words in the “Hallelujah” chorus. The two stanzas of “Since by Man Came Death” were in A minor and D minor.
Hallelujah chorus instrumental parts full#
Most performances since Handel’s day have adjusted the word-setting to make it sound more natural to English-speakers.Īnother triumphant chorus, with full orchestra, this opening is also actually a mirror counterpart to the unaccompanied chorus “Since by Man Came Death,” with similar rhythms, textures, and keys. Handel, whose English was far from perfect, set the word “incorruptible” with the accent on the second and fourth syllables (in-COR-rup-TI-ble), instead of the first and third syllables (IN-cor-RUP-ti-ble). The solo trumpet part, intended to be played on a natural baroque trumpet, was considered too difficult for later performers, who typically use a modern valve trumpet instead. The orchestra’s dotted rhythms connote royalty, as they had in the oratorio’s Overture. But as trombones were used exclusively for church music in the 18th century (and much of the 19th century), Mozart’s German-language edition of Messiah gives these fanfares to a solo French horn instead of a trumpet. In the German Bible, it is a trombone instead of a trumpet that calls the dead out of the graves. The same rising D-major arpeggio that begins the recitative is used as the main theme of the aria that follows.
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