Handel's Messiah: A New View of Its Musical and Spiritual Architecture--Study Guide for Listeners and Performers

Handel's Messiah: A New View of Its Musical and Spiritual Architecture--Study Guide for Listeners and Performers
ISBN-10
1666739065
ISBN-13
9781666739060
Series
Handel's Messiah
Category
Religion
Pages
157
Language
English
Published
2023-04-06
Publisher
Wipf and Stock Publishers
Author
Gregory S. Athnos

Description

We think we know Handel’s Messiah, having heard it or performed it so many times. But is there another way to look at this masterpiece? Who assembled the texts? Why? How did Handel incorporate his own spiritual understanding of the texts? In this treatise, we view the composition from the same Baroque aesthetic perspective the composer used: the Doctrine of Affections—an approach heretofore unexplored in relationship to Handel’s Messiah—which held that every major and minor key prompted a particular, very specific, and involuntary emotional and spiritual response in the listener. When facing a choice between following the accepted rules of musical composition or using the Affect best suited to the scriptural text, Handel almost exclusively chose the Affect; in other words, he chose spiritual insight over compositional tradition. Overlaying the various Affects on each movement of Handel’s composition, we discover the true heart and spiritual depth of the composer’s magnum opus.

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