The Bible and Music

Today we talked about Handel’s Messiah and why he chose those specific Bible passages to bring together into one big musical piece. I was very interested in the process that Handel had to have gone through to find the right pieces and verses that he would be able to set music to not only for a choir, but also for the symphony he would be conducting. In his place, I am not sure whether or not I would choose the same passages that Handel did but I also wouldn’t have written a piece nearly as long as he did. One of the excerpts of Messiah sounded really similar to a piece we are performing in choir which I thought was really interesting. The piece, titled Day By Day We Magnify Thee was also composed by Handel, so maybe it was possible that one piece took the melody to add into the other (I am not sure which piece was composed first). This would definitely be something interesting for me to look into further.