The only work of Georg Frederic Handel’s that could be said to be as atypical as his Israel in Egypt would be his Messiah. Like its more famous successor (which came three years later in 1741), Israel in Egypt has no heroic characters portrayed by soloists and no narrator but the chorus itself, whose singers get to relax for only a handful of solo arias. The original three-part version (we are performing only the original parts II and III tonight, as is the modern practice) was greeted with some bewilderment by Handel’s audience, which was more used to virtuosic solo operatic arias than three hours solid of choral singing. Even the very idea of performing biblical texts in a concert hall usually reserved for the lasciviousness of opera was a concept that had not fully taken hold.

As was Handel’s custom, Israel in Egypt includes extensive borrowings of melodic and harmonic ideas from his own works and those of his lesser contemporaries, including a note-for-note reworking of a simple keyboard canzona by Johann Kaspar Kerll for the text “Egypt was glad when they departed” and substantial materials from Dionigi Erba’s Magnificat for Part III. Yet he shows the masters touch in improving on these borrowed materials and matching them closely to the expression of the words.

The dramatic action of the original three-part work is contained in Part II: Exodus. The Chorus narrates Israel’s enslavement, the plagues on the Egyptians, and the crossing of the Red Sea entirely in the third person voice of the story as recounted in the Psalms rather than in the first person dialogues found in Exodus. Yet this apparent detachment from the potential theatricality of the story only serves to provide Handel with an opportunity to show off his agile virtuosity in choral writing, from the grand to the grotesque to the plangent to the humorous.

Our interest is continually enjoined by two sharply contrasting subjects usually found in each movement (such as the opening chorus’s slowly rising chorale melody “And their cry came up unto God” (which is the old German hymn “Christ lag in Todesbanden”) heard underneath their agitated lament “They oppress’d them with burdens and made them serve with rigour”). While Berlioz later characterized Handel’s pictorial writing, such as the chorus of the locusts (#6: “He spake the word”) as “regrettable imitation of a subject even more regrettable,” the sheer playfulness of the writing was undoubtedly inspiring to Haydn, whose own later The Creation is full of much the cleverness of Handel’s animal and meteorological evocations. Hearing Israel in Egypt during his sojourn in London late in his career was probably also the inspiration for his masterful overture to The Creation – listen closely to the murky harmonies of #8: “He sent a thick darkness over all the land.”

Tonight’s “Part II” of Israel in Egypt (which was originally Part III) begins and ends with one of the most thrilling choruses to come from Handel’s pen (#18 and #39), known as his “Horse and Rider” chorus (here borrowing from his own music, an earlier operatic duet). Following closely the poetic “Song of Moses” text of Exodus 15, the music recounts the events of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt through the terrors inflicted on their enemies and the mercy show to his people. In this, Part III parallels Part II, but it’s celebratory songs of praise and redemption also originally balanced the lament for the death of Joseph (which led to the enslavement of Israel) that was the original Part I.

This is brilliant music written most idiomatically for both the orchestra and chorus. It’s theme of redemption from oppression has resonated across the ages as has the timeless buoyancy and lyric pathos of its music. - TL

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