Botticelli’s twelve angels hold hands in a mystic circle of dance. Handel’s sopranos climb music’s ladder step by step towards the heavens.* Three angels, three men, embrace on earth. Every voice breaks out in a dancing, leaping phrase–“And he shall reign forever”—treated polyphonically while punctuated with energetic, triumphant Hallelujahs. Mary and Jesus painted larger than kings, angels, shepherds, animals. Handel’s choir singing “For unto us a Child is born” again and again as if just hearing the news, as if spreading it everywhere throughout the world. On the word “born,” Handel writes a melisma of 56 racing sixteenth notes of overflowing excitement. Whenever I sing this, I just keep my mouth moving without making a sound. Botticelli’s Mystic Nativity a time of wars, famine, plague. The Bonfire of the Vanities, too, in which luxury goods—including his own paintings—were tossed into the flames. It’s the only piece he ever signed. Handel’s Messiah completed in under a month of feverish activity: I did think I did see all Heaven before me.
Performance of the The Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. Performance by the Royal Choral Society.
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