Froxfield Choir

George Frideric Handel: Alexander’s Feast (1736)

Alexander’s Feast was Handel’s first major success with the Oratorio style and its favourable reception convinced him to abandon Italian opera in favour of composing the great English oratorios.

The subject is The Power of Music – the alternative title of the piece. It is a setting of an ode written by Dryden in 1697 for the celebration of St Cecilia, the patron saint of music. The music was composed around January 1736 and received its première at the Covent Garden Theatre, London, in February 1736. The work was revised several times by Handel but the version we will be performing is largely the first version.

The piece by itself is relatively short, and it has always been customary to perform some additional pieces to supplement it. At the first performance these were concertos, but there was also a tradition of playing the Coronation Anthem’s during oratorios when royalty was present, and with this oratorio’s theme of music before royalty the Coronation Anthems make a particularly fitting supplement to the music, so The King Shall Rejoice will be performed after the introduction.

The narrative of the oratorio is set during a feast held by Alexander to celebrate his conquest of the Persian capital Persepolis. Seated with his courtesan Thais, Alexander listens to a series of pieces played by the famous musician Timotheus, renowned for having first added extra strings to the lyre. Timotheus’s playing arouses a series of different emotions in Alexander, Thais and the listening crowd, as the musician skilfully manipulates their feelings. The story has little dramatic development, but permits Handel to display a wide variety of musical effects.

Timotheus begins with an evocation of the god Jove, rousing and majestic, inspiring Alexander to behave in a god-like fashion. Timotheus swiftly changes to imagery of the youthful, jolly Bacchus, with a rolling soldier’s drinking song. Alexander becomes stirred by this to marshal pride and Timotheus immediately quiets him with a mournful call to pity for the defeated Persian king Darius, who had fled from Alexander into the mountains. In a rare moment of softness, the chorus contemplates the fallen pride of Darius in a great lament.

Timotheus next adopts the soft and sweet Lydian measure (an ancient mode of music) turning Alexander to contemplation of the beautiful Thais, and stressing how much more important love is than the troubles of war. As Alexander falls asleep on Thais’s breast, the crowd applauds the triumph of love as won by music.

Timotheus wakes Alexander with a rousing chord, and soloists and chorus together build up to furiously demand revenge for the Greeks slain in battle. Inspired by the music, Alexander and the crowd, led by Thais, seize torches and burn the city to the ground – a genuine historical event.

The tenor muses on how Timotheus with only the lyre and flute to aid him could inspire such changes. Then in a chorus that cleverly displays increasingly complex musical development, the advent of St Cecilia is remembered. St Cecilia is credited with having invented the organ (‘the vocal frame’) and thus enlarged the possibilities of music with instrumental notes that for the first time could be sustained (‘And added length to solemn sounds’) with complex harmonies (‘arts unknown’) impossible in Timotheus’s day. Handel for the first time introduces complex chromatic harmonies into his work, using the full musical resources of soloists, chorus and orchestra to demonstrate the accomplished capabilities of the modern music of his time. Timotheus’s style of music was able to raise a mortal man to the skies, but Cecilia’s music drew an angel down from heaven.

The piece ends with a hymn in praise of St Cecilia and the blessing of music.

Part One

Overture

Larghetto e staccato – Allegro – Andante

Recitative – Tenor

‘Twas at the royal feast, for Persia won
By Philip’s warlike son:
Aloft in awful state
The god-like hero sate
On his imperial throne:
His valiant peers were plac’d around;
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound.
So should desert in arms be crown’d.

Coronation Anthem no.2 – The King Shall Rejoice

Recitative – Tenor

The lovely Thais by his side
Sate like a blooming Eastern bride,
In flow’r of youth, and beauty’s pride.

Air – Tenor, Soprano and Chorus

Happy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserves the fair.

Recitative – Tenor

Timotheus plac’d on high,
Amid the tuneful quire,
With flying fingers touch’d the lyre.
The trembling notes ascend the sky,
And heav’nly joys inspire.

Recitative – Soprano

The song began from Jove,
Who left his blissful seats above;
(Such is the pow’r of mighty love)
A dragon’s fiery form bely’d the God;
Sublime, on radiant spires he rode,
When he to fair Olympia press’d,
And while he sought her snowy breast:
Then, round her slender waist he curl’d,
And stamp’d an image of himself, a sov’reign of the world.

Chorus

The list’ning crowd admire the lofty sound,
“A present deity!” they shout around;
“A present deity!” the vaulted roofs rebound.

Air – Soprano

With ravish’d ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the God,
Affects to nod,
And seems to shake the spheres.

Recitative – Tenor

The praise of Bacchus, then, the sweet musician sung;
Of Bacchus, ever fair, and ever young:
The jolly God in triumph comes;
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums:
Flush’d with a purple grace,
He shows his honest face;
Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes!

Air – Bass

Bacchus, ever fair and young,
Drinking joys did first ordain;
Bacchus’ blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure:
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.

Chorus

Bacchus’ blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure:
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.

Recitative – Tenor

Sooth’d with the sound, the king grew vain;
Fought all his battles o’er again;
And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain!
The master saw the madness rise,
His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes;
And while he Heav’n and earth defy’d,
Chang’d his hand, and check’d his pride.

Recitative – Soprano

He chose a mournful muse,
Soft pity to infuse.

Air – Soprano

He sung Darius great and good,
By too severe a fate,
Fall’n from his high estate,
And welt’ring in his blood:
Deserted at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed,
On the bare earth expos’d he lies,
Without a friend to close his eyes.

Recitative – Soprano

With downcast looks the joyless victor sate,
Revolving in his alter’d soul,
The various turns of chance below,
And, now and then, a sigh he stole,
And tears began to flow.

Chorus

Behold Darius, great and good,
Fall’n, fall’n, fall’n, fall’n, welt’ring in his blood;
On the bare earth expos’d he lies,
Without a friend to close his eyes.

Interval

Part 1b

Recitative – Tenor

The mighty master smil’d to see
That love was in the next degree;
‘Twas but a kindred sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love:

Arioso – Soprano

Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,
Soon he sooth’d his soul to pleasures.

Air – Tenor

War, he sung, is toil and trouble,
Honour but an empty bubble,
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying;
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, oh think it worth enjoying.

Recitative – Soprano

The Prince, unable to conceal his pain,
Gaz’d on the fair,
Who caus’d his care;
And sigh’d and look’d, sigh’d and look’d,
Sigh’d and look’d, and sigh’d again:
At length with love and wine at once oppress’d,
The vanquish’d victor sunk upon her breast.

Chorus

The many rend the skies, with loud applause;
So love was crown’d, but music won the cause.

Part Two

Recitative – Tenor

Now strike the golden lyre again,
A louder yet — and yet a louder strain!
Break his bands of sleep asunder,
And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.

Chorus

Break his bands of sleep asunder,
And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.

Recitative – Tenor

Hark, hark! — the horrid sound
Has rais’d up his head,
As awak’d from the dead,
And amaz’d, he stares around.

Air – Bass

Revenge, revenge, Timotheus cries,
See the furies arise,
See the snakes that they rear,
How they hiss in their hair,
And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!
Behold a ghastly band,
Each a torch in his hand!
Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain,
And unbury’d, remain
Inglorious on the plain.

Recitative – Tenor

Give the vengeance due
To the valiant crew:
Behold how they toss their torches on high,
How they point to the Persian abodes,
And glitt’ring temples of their hostile gods!

Air – Tenor

The princes applaud with a furious joy;
And the king seiz’d a flambeau, with zeal to destroy.

Air – Soprano and Chorus

Thais led the way,
To light him to his prey;
And like another Helen, fir’d another Troy.
The princes applaud with a furious joy;
And the king seiz’d a flambeau, with zeal to destroy.

Recitative – Tenor

Thus long ago,
ere heaving bellows learn’d to blow,
while organs yet were mute,
Timotheus, to his breathing flute,
and sounding lyre,
could swell the soul to rage,
or kindle soft desire.

Chorus

At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;
The sweet enthusiasts from her sacred store,
Enlarg’d the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,
With Nature’s mother-wit, and arts unknown before.

Chorus

Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown;
He rais’d a mortal to the skies,
She drew an angel down.

Chorus

Your voices tune, and raise them high,
Till th’echo from the vaulted sky
The blest Cecilia’s name;
Music to Heav’n and her we owe,
The greatest blessing that’s below;
Sound loudly then her fame:
Let’s imitate her notes above,
And may this evening ever prove,
Sacred to harmony and love.