Welcome to Music for Life, enhancing the Armstrong concert experience. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. In today's episode, we will explore George Friedrich Handel's imaginative oratorio, Israel in Egypt. This masterful work will be performed at Armstrong Auditorium on Wednesday, March 16th. Performing this work will be our fantastic choral group in residence, the Armstrong Chamber Choir, plus a professional orchestra of hand-picked musicians who largely specialize in this style of playing. So stick around as we explore what is so uniquely special about this masterpiece today on Music for Life.
The most famous composition for choir in all of the standard repertoire would have to be this. That's the so-called Hallelujah Chorus from a larger work titled Messiah, and it's by George Friedrich Handel, a composer who lived from 1685 to 1759. Handel is also famous for a lot of other compositions, his water music, his music for the royal fireworks, a choral masterpiece from his coronation anthems titled Zadok the Priest. Messiah is arguably his most well-known work because of the inclusion of the chorus titled Hallelujah. That kind of work that Messiah is, is called an oratorio.
An oratorio is kind of like an opera where singers are telling you a story, except in an oratorio, there's no scenery, costumes, or acting. The singers just stand there and sing you the story. Messiah is about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But this was not the only oratorio Handel wrote. His most imaginative one, I would suggest, is Israel in Egypt, an oratorio that premiered in 1739. I think you'll see why it's so imaginative as we explore this work today. We're about to perform this masterpiece at Armstrong Auditorium on Wednesday, March 16th.
Presenting this will be our 33-member vocal ensemble in residence here, the Armstrong Chamber Choir. Soloists will include music faculty and alum of the Armstrong Music Program. For the orchestra, we have worked closely with the best local musicians to select orchestral players who excel at this style of music particularly. So we're very excited to showcase our chorus, our hand-picked orchestra, and this timeless masterpiece to the general public. What makes this piece so imaginative is a technique Handel employs called word painting. This is where a composer makes the music sound like what the words are describing. For example, in the first half, which is about the plagues on Egypt and Israel's departure, Handel ingeniously portrays frogs, lice, hailstones, darkness, and death of the firstborn, just to name a few. With the way he composes the music, it really makes the imagination come alive. And for example, in the second half...
which is the entire Song of Moses of Exodus 15 set to music, Handel portrays a line of text like the horse and his rider have he thrown into the sea to where you can almost hear the galloping of the horses. So we'll hear that as we go through this work. I can't play you every movement, but I can give you highlights that showcase this word painting technique. I'll mainly be using a recording of John Elliot Gardner conducting the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque soloists, but we also have some samples from our Armstrong Chamber Choir as well, which I'm excited to share. The work will begin, as most oratorios do, with an overture, an instrumental-only work to set the tone for the experience.
Though Handel revised the work after its premiere, omitting the first section to get right into the section covering the plagues on Egypt, the performance practice is to maintain the first section's overture that he had originally put in this work. Now granted, that overture was recycled from another composition, a funeral anthem for Queen Caroline, and in this case it is meant to depict a lamentation on the death of Joseph.
After that melancholy overture, that lamentation on the death of Joseph, the first vocal movement of Handel's Israel and Egypt begins to describe the slavery and oppression of the Israelites in Egypt after a pharaoh came to power who didn't know Joseph. The second vocal movement immediately launches into the plagues that the Bible says God sent on Egypt. The first plague was the water turning into blood. The next plague was an overabundance of frogs everywhere, which Handel portrays in a very jumpy, skippy alto solo. This movement also includes text about the plague that struck the cattle, blotches, and blanes as the alto sings.
Then the next movement is an outstanding example of word painting. It begins by describing the plague of flies and lice. The quickly moving violins ignite the imagination to picture the swarms of lice and flies in the air. Then later in the movement, the text goes on to describe a plague of locusts. Handel is grouping these plagues in a way where a couple will fit into each movement, not necessarily going in the order of the ten plagues. And when the locusts come in, the low strings start doing quick motions, so it sounds a lot like the flies and lice material, just a lot thicker to represent the locusts. Let's listen to this movement. This is, again, a recording of John Elliott Gardner conducting the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soul.
The text is, He spake the word, and there came all manner of flies. He spake the word, and there came lice in all their quarters. He spake, and the locusts came without number and devoured the fruits of the ground. That was the plague of flies, lice, and locusts, depicted imaginatively by the way G.F. Handel writes for the strings in that movement. We heard a recording of the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque soloists under the direction of John Elliot Gardner.
Now, in listening to these recordings, there's a bit of a challenge to get a real sense of how great Israel and Egypt actually is. Handel scores a lot of it for two choruses. That doesn't mean we're singing with another choir, but the chorus splits into two sections. A lot of the two choirs singing is what we call antiphonal. That means one of the choirs sings a phrase first, and then the other choir sings the same thing right afterward. This back and forth, this aural tennis match, so to speak, makes for really exciting moments in the oratorio. But this is hard to capture in an audio recording. But how we'll stand on the stage will really highlight this feature of Handel's oratorio. The two choirs will be on opposite sides.
of the stage, and the audience will experience this back and forth, this stereophonic experience, pretty clearly. And one of the best movements to demonstrate this, where one choir answers the other, is the next movement, the plague of fiery hailstones. I'll play you a great recording of it, though you still won't see the back and forth between the choirs, but the lines of text are being tossed between the two groups, and the mix does a pretty good job of putting one choir toward the left speaker and the other choir toward the right speaker, so you can hear a little bit of that back and forth. But you basically just hear the echoing of these phrases, he gave them hailstones for rain, and then the other choir responds with that same phrase. Then the first choir sings, fire mingled with the hail, and so repeats the other choir.
Fire mingled with the hail ran along upon the ground is the entire phrase that you'll hear sung back and forth. And of course, you'll hear the word painting in this. This movement starts like a gentle rain shower, and that turns into this tumultuous movement featuring brass and timpani, depicting fiery hailstones crashing down and bouncing along the ground. This is a great recording by the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra under Jeanette Sorrell. That recording from Israel and Egypt, from the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, conducted by Jeanette Sorrell, is a great example of the back and forth that occurs between the two sections of the choir in Handel's Israel and Egypt. That was the plague of fiery hailstones. I'll play the next two movements from the John Elliott Gardner recording that we've been listening to. First is the plague of darkness, where the text goes, He sent a thick darkness over all the land, even darkness which might be felt.
And then after that, we'll go straight into the movement describing the final plague on Egypt. The text is, He smote all the firstborn of Egypt, the chief of all their strength. You can hear the striking of the orchestra to help underscore the meaning of that text. We just heard two movements from G.F. Handel's Israel in Egypt, depicting the final two plagues on Egypt, thick darkness that might be felt, and the death of the firstborn. I should mention that the text of these movements, particularly the events of the first half, describe the plagues and the exodus itself, and those texts come from the Psalms. The plague on the firstborn came from Psalm 78, 51. The movement that follows that, which we'll hear next, comes from Psalm 78, verse 52, rendered in the lyrics this way, quote, but as for his people, he led them forth like sheep.
Now, to help depict this shepherding imagery, Handel calls for two flutes to join the orchestra just for this movement. This gives such a pastoral feel to this movement. Here's a performance the Armstrong Chamber Choir recently did of this live, and this includes a piano reduction in place of the orchestra, but we did have our two flutes play those featured parts. Also, we had our principal cellist give underpinning to this as well, and this movement is such a joyous contrast to the plague we just heard. This movement goes on to portray text from another psalm, Psalm 105.37, which in these lyrics goes like this. He brought them out with silver and gold. There was not one feeble person among their tribes.
Again, this is the Armstrong Chamber Choir, the group that will be performing Handel's Israel and Egypt on Wednesday, March 16th, and this is them recently with a reduced orchestra for this performance of just this movement, featuring Ellie Hilliker on the piano reduction, Seth Malone on the cello, and our two flutists for this production, Leah Hyde and Jenna Natanawan. You are listening to Music for Life. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. This is KPCG. In today's episode, we are exploring George Friedrich Handel's imaginative oratorio, Israel and Egypt, in the lead-up to the Armstrong Chamber Choir's performance of it on March 16th.
We just heard an actual performance of the 33-member Armstrong Chamber Choir and actually doing a movement from Handel's Israel in Egypt there. The orchestration was reduced for that particular performance, but still featuring the two flutes, which Handel scored just for that movement to evoke images of how God shepherded Israel out of Egypt. Of course, for the concert itself on Wednesday, March 16th, we will have Handel's full orchestration represented. It will be a 23-piece orchestra there on stage comprised of professional musicians who specialize in this kind of playing. We're going through the story flow of this work, and particularly the word painting Handel employs to ignite the listener's imagination.
The first half is full of this as it describes the plagues on Egypt as well as Israel's exodus. The next movement I want to play is another great example of this and proceeds further into the story flow. The text is, he rebuked the Red Sea and it was dried up. And that's the dramatic first section of this movement. Then, he led them through the deep as through a wilderness, which is the middle section of this movement and a very sprightly eight-part fugue. And then, but the waters overwhelmed their enemies. There was not one of them left.
And that is the final climactic section of this great movement, where the timpani is very active to depict the tumult of the Red Sea crashing in on Pharaoh's armies. The text of this movement comes from Psalm 106, verses 9 and 11. We're listening to a recording of John Elliot Gardner conducting the English Baroque soloists and the Monteverdi Choir. That was the Monteverdi Choir, the English Baroque soloist, and conductor John Eliot Gardner in that epic movement from Israel and Egypt, depicting the parting and closing of the Red Sea to aid Israel's escape from Egypt and the annihilation of the Egyptian army. We're discussing this imaginative oratorio by George Frederick Handel on today's episode of Music for Life as we prepare for the March 16th performance of this work at Armstrong Auditorium.
There's one more movement in the first half, which begins majestically, but ends quietly. We'll skip this one in this episode for sake of time, but it covers the final verse of Exodus 14, which reads, The next verse in the Bible is the beginning of Exodus 15. which begins the so-called Song of Moses or the Song of the Red Sea. The entire part two of Handel's Israel and Egypt sets this entire text to music. These 21 verses of the Bible are set to about 50 minutes of music. And keep in mind that in the Baroque era, in Baroque era music, it was common to just set a couple of lines of text per movement so that text could be repeated over and over. So people could hear the repetition of that text plenty of times and understand what was being said. It wasn't like they could go home and download the music or Google the lyrics, you know, and listen to it over and over. So what they got in the live performance was pretty much what they might hear once in their lifetime.
So composers made sure to do it a lot in one movement with as little text as possible. Times have changed for us today, obviously, but it's good to listen to this music with that historical context in mind. In the second half, Handel's use of word painting isn't as obvious, but it is there, and there are portions of this text that still lend themselves to stronger word painting. For instance, the music is slow, lugubrious, and in a downward motion melodically when talking about the depths covering Pharaoh's armies, or the choir portraying the sound of terror and melting away in all the foreign nations that hear about God's miracles of the Red Sea. And as we'll hear at the end of today's episode, the galloping of horses being portrayed musically as the text discusses the horse and his rider that were conquered in the Red Sea.
For our discussion here, I want to skip to the second movement of this part too. Handel sets the first half of Exodus 15 verse 2 for a soprano duet. The text is, The Lord is my strength in song, he has become my salvation. The second half of the verse he sets as a majestic chorus, the text being, He is my God, and I will prepare him in habitation, my Father's God, and I will exalt him. We have actually performed both of these movements live here at Armstrong. As part of different worship services, and I'll play those here, the soprano duet was performed here by Paula Malone and Jessica Brandon, who will be our sopranos performing it on March 16th. Our regular concertgoers will recognize Paula as my wife, and our soprano and voice faculty here at Armstrong, she and the alum Jessica Brandon, also played the roles of Naomi and Ruth, respectively, in the musical we performed here back in December 2016, which staged the Book of Ruth. The chorus following this is being done by our Armstrong Chamber Choir, completely unaccompanied, though. This is a very dramatically orchestrated number, complete with brass and such, but I believe it also works as an...
unaccompanied movement, which worked for our service there. And if there's a choir that doesn't have access to Handel's instrumentation, that's a really good option there for this movement. And that's just what we did in this case. So here's the soprano duet, The Lord is My Strength, with yours truly accompanying on the piano, along with my sons Ezekiel and Seth Malone on violin and cello, respectively, followed by He is My God, sung unaccompanied by the Armstrong Chamber Choir. That was the Armstrong Chamber Choir singing the movement He Is My God from Handel's Israel in Egypt, which they will perform complete with Handel's full orchestration on Wednesday, March 16th. As we discussed this work today, I've played a few movements from professional recordings of this work, but we've also been doing bits and pieces of it live here at Armstrong as part of our worship services, and I'm playing some of those recordings today here as well to give you an idea of the exact people who will be performing it on our stage here.
After this movement, we have a great bass duet titled The Lord is a Man of War. And with that text, of course, it has to be two men singing. And it's going to be sung by two men who had leading roles in our most recent Armstrong-produced musical about the Apostle Paul, the man who played the evangelist Timothy, and the one who played the antagonist, Simon Magus. After that, Handel sets a few more verses of the Song of Moses for the chorus, followed by a tenor solo, which will be sung by our assistant music director, Mark Jenkins, and then another soprano solo to be sung by my wife. And then after another choral movement, Handel returns to the duet motif to set the text in Exodus 15, 13, which reads, Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed. Thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation. This is set for an alto and tenor. Mr. Jenkins will sing the tenor part, and one of our outstanding alum, Randy Irwin, will sing the alto part. Here's a recent live recording of theirs with yours truly on the piano.
which thou hast led forth We just heard our assistant music director, Mark Jenkins, on the tenor part in that duet with mezzo-soprano Brandi Irwin, both of whom will be singing that exquisite duet from Israel and Egypt for the March 16th performance at Armstrong Auditorium. That covers text in Exodus 15, the Song of Moses, that describes how God would guide the Israelites to the Promised Land. And that theme is continued in the movement after next as well. This is another mezzo-soprano solo, and it comes right before the final bombastic choral movements. In it, Handel serenely sets Exodus 15, 17 to music. The text reads, Thou shalt bring them in and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O Lord, which Thou hast made for Thee to dwell in, in the sanctuary.
The mezzo-soprano who will be singing this, Khalila Brooks, sang this several months back at a service here in Armstrong Auditorium. And here's a recording of a little bit of that performance with our tenor, Mark Jenkins, on the piano. You are listening to Music for Life. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. This is KPCG. In today's episode, we have explored George Frederick Handel's imaginative oratorio, Israel in Egypt, in the lead-up to the Armstrong Chamber Choir's performance of it on March 16th. The Chamber Choir is teaming up with a professional orchestra of hand-picked musicians who specialize in this style of playing.
More information about this and all Armstrong Auditorium events can be found at armstrongauditorium.org. More information about the Armstrong Chamber Choir can be found on YouTube at both my YouTube channel, Purple Mozart, and also at the Armstrong Arts YouTube channel, for which I'll put a link in today's show notes. We just heard a live performance of one of our soloists singing one of the final solos in the oratorio, Thou Shalt Bring Them In. That was mezzo-soprano Khalilah Brooks, a staffer here at Armstrong and an alum of our music program. Some of our concertgoers may have seen her in supporting roles in a couple of our most recent musicals as well.
We'll end today's episode with the final choruses of the work. Again, the second half of the oratorio is taken from the Song of Moses as recorded in Exodus 15. These last couple of movements cover the last few verses of this song, which summarizes the escape of the Israelites through the Red Sea and the annihilation of the Egyptian army, and it also discusses the fact that Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Moses and Aaron, had a special role in performing this song. This is a great soprano solo that Handel sets, dramatically contrasted against the larger sound of the choir and full orchestra. This movement also incorporates word painting with the phrase, the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea, and Handel's rhythmic treatment of this, evoking images of...
galloping horses. It's awesome. So let's hear this finale. I'm going to switch to a different recording now. This is Thomas Hengelbrock conducting the Baltasar Neumann Ensemble and Choir, and I hope you enjoy, and I hope to see you soon at Armstrong.
You have been listening to Music for Life, a production of KPCG 101.3 on the FM dial in Edmond, Oklahoma. From the Herbert W. Armstrong College campus, I'm Ryan Malone. Thanks for joining me.