I find it ironic that I am using the tag Psalmtweet when the tweet concept has been undermined by an owner that dictates software interfaces from the top down. I didn't use Twitter till recently except by automated posting. I never really logged on until the Ukraine war started and then I followed a number of news sources that are still active.
Having recently heard a very fine performance in the baroque style of Messiah, I have decided to begin a series on the texts of Messiah. I have drafted a few and will begin the series when the psalms are done at the end of this month. I think there is a lot to say on the music, the translations, and the changes of voice in the text of the libretto. But much is online already so I am somewhat mute in my analysis, but I will continue to see how my translation makes life difficult for a German-English musician and how the music implicit in the Bible differs from the elaborate music that is freely invented.
A tentative suggestion is that the music underlying the text of the Bible is designed not to glorify the words arbitrarily as of course Handel was wonderfully prepared to do, but simply to restore the tone of voice and inter-verse connections to an otherwise potentially misleading written text. There's nothing magical here, just a way of focusing the interpretation.
It's curious to me that most of the texts of Messiah are direct or slightly altered from Isaiah and the Psalms. I'm not sure what I will discover, but I will start. Perhaps I will be less muted as the series begins.
No comments:
Post a Comment