fits & starts: after Handel

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with the second movement of George Frideric Handel’s 1741 masterwork, Messiah. It is—without question—my favorite movement, but, as a baritone, there was never going to be a chance that I’d get to perform it myself. So, relegated to the bass section during the half dozen times I’ve participated in productions of Messiah, I got to sit back and listen to the fascinating way that Handel sets the scene for what’s to come in the next few hours of music. He does this by sort of creating the feeling of the stoppage (or slowing) of time and this is, I think, because he was a master of the English-language oratorio (a genre which he helped invent).

The “Comfort ye” movement is technically a recitativo accompagnato (in that it uses orchestra), but Handel flirts with some elements of the more speech-like recitativo secco and lyrical arias as well. This fluidity between metered tempi, rapid-fire speech, and moments for the tenor to draw out creates that push and pull which has fascinated me over the 25 years I’ve known the choral warhorse that is Messiah. Sometimes you’re moving forward; sometimes you’re held hovering in the air. Hence, the title (and all the tempo changes).

Note: fits & starts: after Handel can be performed transposed down a half step to E-flat with another Handel “deconstruction I did called Daughter Ecstatic as a two-movement work called Two (new) Choruses from Messiah.

-Joshua Shank