Text Painting in Handel

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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It could mean that He is constant and everything stems from Him, or it could also mean that He is the foundation on which the world was built. Every time the word comes up in the song, it is set using long notes that may or may not turn into a run at the end. ” This, as in every rising word, is set in sequence and the pitches of the word itself rise and fall. There is not much to say about the text painting in this piece, but it is important to notice that this recitative is the first that is set over only a basso continuo.

The next movement, “But Who May Abide the Day of His Coming” is a good one for examples of good text painting. The first three notes in this pattern are high and the last three are low. Handel is one of the few masters of text painting during the baroque period. Handel uses this technique so well to highlight for the listeners those words that are the most important or meaningful. In the next section the word “arise” is repeated. The sections of text were set both in imitation and in mono-rhythmic sections. The only part of the piece that sounds “plain” is the word plain. The word desire is set in the same way though, which makes me wonder a little bit about why he set those two words in the same way. This also illustrates the description of God in this section.

Common topics in this essay:
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Approximate Word count = 1534
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

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