Pifa

About this scene

The Pastoral Symphony, a siciliano over a drone, night fields with small soft lights swaying.

Night over the fields. Left and Right are the fields, a deep blue-green that stirs slowly like grass in a light wind, and on each of them a handful of small soft lights, the shepherds' lanterns among the flock, sway gently to the siciliano's lilt, back and forth once a bar. The porch holds the drone: a low warm glow on the three porch runs that swells softly each time the basses' long note changes, warm on the C drone, a little brighter when it moves to G. The tune plays over the fields: each note of the first violins brightens a lantern on Left, the one its pitch points to, each note of the seconds one on Right.

In the middle section, over the G drone, the lanterns swell with the crescendo and the swaying widens; when the music turns to the minor and fades, they dim and sway close, and the drone moves on. At the close the music goes very quiet, the lanterns settle and stop swaying, and the drone glows on, warm, under a still field: the calmest scene of the set.

The music is Handel's own: Messiah No. 13, the opening phrase over the C drone (bars 1-4), the middle section over the G drone to its half close (bars 12 and 14-21; bar 13, a repeat of 14, left out), and the da capo's last two bars (31-32) with their fermata, transcribed from Prout's full score (Novello, 1902) into pifa.musicxml and timed by scripts/score_excerpt.py at Prout's Larghetto, quaver 132. Strings only, as Handel scored it, the violas doubling the violins an octave below as Prout prints them, the drone on cellos and basses.