In our last segment we saw that John Gay
wrote "The Beggar's Opera" which sort of turned the whole operatic world in England on
its ear
and put poor George Frederick Handel out of his very cushy operatic job.
So now we're going to see what happened to Handel
after this happened and it turned out to be a great thing for musicians for
time eternal probably. So, Beggar's Opera comes along.
Everybody wants to go see that. Nobody wants to go see Italian opera anymore. Handel needs to
find a new gig.
So what he did was discover sort of a niche market.
So in England at this time and in most of Europe
when Lent came around you couldn't go to the opera anyway.
All the theaters closed. All the opera houses closed. The concert halls closed.
So you know all those fun things went away
for that 40 days of Lent. So here's an opportunity
So Handel figures, "If I can ust do something religious
during this period of time, that'll be acceptable because we can do that during
Lent."
So what he did was to take all the best parts
of opera; the singing parts,
the orchestra, the storyline,
and what he did was get rid of all the parts you really don't have to have. So
it's not on stage. Well, it's on a stage but it's not a theatrical stage.
So they're not wearing costumes. There's no scenery.
We got rid of all that acting. So you have this story have all the wonderful
music
but you got rid of all the things that are sort of considered the bad parts in terms
of being
allowable during Lent. So he created this new thing that we now call
the oratorio. Oratorio! So
everybody knows at least one Handel oratorio because everybody knows
"Messiah," and it is "Messiah," not The Messiah which people often call it. The
title is just
"Messiah." We're not going to look at that one because
frankly, everybody knows the Hallelujah chorus. You know lots of pieces from that.
We're gonna look at a different Handel oratorio just to give you a little
different perspective on it. So what are our three parts that we kept from the opera?
Actually four-parts. Its gonna have an overture.
So we're still gonna have that nice orchestral piece that starts us out,
gets everybody settled down ready to go. And we're going to listen to one of those in a
minute.
We're still going to have arias because after all that's mostly why people went to the
opera, to hear all their favorite singers
do all their best stuff and we're also going to have recitative because we
still have to get our story line
connected and that's what we use recitative for; it's the dialogue part
or the narration if you're trying to tell a story where you don't actually speak to
each other.
And then we have choruses, the Hallelujah Choruses,the
be-all and end-all of choruses. But Handel wrote
I don't know, maybe hundreds of those choruses. Even Messiah has, I don't know
maybe a dozen. So there are lots of Handel choruses out there.
The Oratorio that we're going to take a look at
is called "Samson." So obviously we're on a biblical subject.
Still, not all of his oratorios are biblical but we're going to stick with one of those today.
So the story of Samson, people know Samson is a very strong man
who's married to Delila, you know he defeats her enemies
and Delila's not all that, you know she's...
she's not probably the best wife for him, and in the end
they cut off his hair, he loses power and he dies so
it's got all the elements of everything. You've got a
love story twisted though it might be, you've got the great hero for his
country
and then you have his doom at the end.
So we're going to have three examples in your YouTube videos to watch for this.
First, the overture. As you listen to that overture
think about the elements of Baroque style. Listen for
polyphonic texture. Listen for use of basso continuo.
Does it have a harpsichord? Is there a harpsichord in there? Listen for that! See if that's playing
a continual part with the baseline.
Listen for lots of ornamented notes, lots of trills,
turns, other kinds of extra notes added to...
to the melody line. Think about how fast the harmony changes.
You know, is this one of those continuous melodies that we talked about?
So think about those elements of Baroque style as you go listen to
the overture from Handel's "Samson."
Alright, now you've listened to the overture. You're all settled down now you're ready for
the show.
So this would be a concert performance. It might even be in a church so
the choir will be on the stage, the singers will be on the stage, and the
orchestra will be there in the front or even on the stage depending on what
kind of...
how big a stage you have available.
So the story goes along. The second thing that you're going to listen to is
a chorus. This chorus is sung...
Samson and his
soldier friends are getting ready to go to battle
and they're singing about how they are going to teach the enemy about the power
of God. So, it's really
all about that and the great thing about this, it's in English. So you can
easily understand. If you have trouble understanding it,
I will probably also find a translation page for you because,
even if they're singing in English, sometimes because there's so many notes
and things get drawn out, people have
a little trouble understanding that. So the name of this particular movement
is they shall... "Then They Shall Know."
The titles are not like really exciting most of the time. They just take
the first line of the text, so "Then They Shall Know," and then it talks about the power of
Jehovah and
all of that, again listen for those elements of Baroque style.
Now we've got singers instead of just instrumentalists
and a lot of singers. So you may not hear quite as much ornamentation.
Obviously the more performers you have performing,
the fewer of them can be doing lots of extra notes because otherwise it gets
a little too chaotic.
Alright, so now we'll listen to... this is from the first
act, I guess we could call it, even though it's not really a stage play, of
"Samson, Then They Shall Know." This is the chorus.
Alright, now you've heard an overture and you've had a chorus. I'm not going to ask you to
listen to a recitative
because frankly those aren't all that interesting to listen to by themselves.
Instead we're going to go to the final aria
of this production. So at this point,
Samson has already died. All of his people are in deep
mourning because that's a very sad time.
So this final aria is called, "Let the Bright Seraphim,"
which you think, "What? What's that got to do with Samson?"
Well, the character, you know they do have characters even though they're not acting during
this oratorio.
The character who sings this is identified in the score as
an Israelitsh woman, you know,
sort of an Isrealite or something. It's kind of an odd way, but that the way it's
written
into the score. So she is singing to the rest of the people
about how we should be glorifying
God here and that Samson has, you know, really served his people well, that he has
now gone to a better place
and the bright Seraphim, the angels,
are greeting him and, you know, he's in he's in a better place and let's be
happy about that and celebrate
all the good parts about this. This is an interesting
aria because
first you know we've got this sort of character who doesn't really have much to
do with the story. She's just gonna be our sort of narrator and tell us about how
this is really not a bad thing. But the other thing that it has that's
really interesting, and the video is particularly interesting for you to
watch,
is that it's using a really different kind of trumpet.
Remember I said that the trumpet is a very popular instrument in the Baroque Period, but
that it's a much higher pitched
instrument. So as you look at it you can see that...
you can hear that it's much higher, but you can also see that it's smaller. This is
like a little tiny
trumpet and it's got some weird looking keys.
So, normally our trumpet you know it's like this; we've got our three valves.
This one, the valves are kind of off on the side. It's like a double frame.
It's very odd. The Baroque trumpet just comes...
its odd sometimes. They come in different designs and I think that one is
particularly interesting.
But it's a good chance for you to see and hear that Baroque trumpet style
and along with the soprano who's singing it.
It's also a good example of a da capo aria.
Remember we have a da capo aria when we have an 'a' section,
we have a contrasting 'b,' and then when they come back to sing 'a'
again, as we see throughout the Baroque Period and even into the Classical
Period,
the second time around, that's the singer's chance
to put in all those extra little ornaments that
their audiences would have expected. So as you listen
and then, the great thing about these videos is you can go back and listen to
that little section. You can listen to the 'a,' you could skip the 'b,' and listen to 'a'
again, and really get a sense of how she's changed it the second time
to incorporate all those lovely elements of Baroque style
that the audiences wanted to see that were a good reason for
Handel to create this oratorio so they could still get to hear all that
during Lent. And, it gives you a chance to hear
really wonderful Baroque trumpet which is also doing
lots of interesting ornamental things.
So, Samson oratorio; we have overture, we have a chorus, we have
an aria. Good chance for you to listen for all those elements of Baroque style
as you enjoy this beautiful music.