Part 1: Scene i, no. 3 Air: Isaiah 40:4
“Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low: the crooked straight and the rough places plain.”
When I was kid we used to pile in the back of my Grandpa’s hovercraft of a car, and he would drive us into town. The road we took was full of dips and hills, and we called it the roller-coaster road because he would gun it and our tummies would fly up and down. This happened pre-seatbelts and we were all over the back of the car, squealing and laughing.
Fast forward to my adulthood. The highway department came through and leveled out most of that road, taking out the ups and downs and sharp curves, and while it is now less fun to drive it is far more efficient and safe.
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low; the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.
That is exactly what happened to our roller coaster road. A safe highway was created.
Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight…a highway for our God.
Christ came into a time fulfilled. The world was perfectly placed for the diffusion of Christianity at precisely that time in history. Pax Romana had, among other things, created good roads. Safe roads. At no time before had the world been as safe for travel. The roads were level and well kept. Within 500 years of Christ’s birth, most of Europe and North Africa were Christian. That is not a very long time in the span of history.
I mentioned word-painting in an earlier post. In this movement of Messiah we can hear it used correctly. Handel begins this movement with an instrumental ritornello, or little return. We will hear snippets of this material interspersed with the vocal material throughout the work. He then gives us, as is common in Baroque literature, an initial statement of the opening phrase. Handel then leads into a coloratura passage in which the “valleys” are “exalted” by using an ascending sequential pattern (starting at 3’29” in the recording.) He then ascends to “mountain” as the highest note of the phrase before descending to the lowest note of the phrase on the word “low.”
“The crooked” meanders around until it comes to a held note on “straight.” All of this is the DEFINITION of word-painting.
But it is more than that. Handel gives us such joyful music, it is almost as if the mountains, hills, and rough places are magically re-aligning themselves for the coming of Messiah. One hears the words of Psalm 114:4 brought to life musically: “You mountains, why were you jumping like goats, and you little hills like lambs?”
I particularly love this performance by tenor Kurt Streit and the English Concert directed by Trevor Pinnock. Streit fully captures the excitement and joy of this work, and of the anticipation of the coming Messiah.