Rejoice Greatly

About this scene

The soprano's coloratura as quick bright silver runs along the house, the most joyful motion in the set.

The house is lit warm, a low gold that rises whenever the strings play forte and sinks back when they drop to piano, and the violins' semiquavers throw small gold sparkles across the wings and the porch, one for every note. The ritornello's last bar opens it, forte.

The soprano is silver. Her plain notes, "Rejoice, rejoice", "O daughter of Zion", glow at the middle of Porch Front, the far light; but every time the words break into a run, the silver leaves the porch and races along the roofline, a comet with a tail, one step for every semiquaver, its head bobbing a little up and down the line with the tune. The runs take turns: one from the left end of Left toward the right, the next from the free end of Right back toward the left, and the longest, "rejoice" over four bars, crosses the whole house from Left to the end of Right. Side, the house's flank, keeps the warm light and nothing starts there.

Then the return: one more run, and "and shout, shout, shout, shout": four bursts of silver, on Left, on Right, on Porch Front and on the whole porch, each opening out from its middle. "Rejoice greatly": a last run and a bow. The closing ritornello brings the whole house up to warm gold for its cadence, drops to the porch for the piano echo, and lands on the last chord in full gold, held.

The music is Handel's own: Messiah No. 18, the 4/4 Allegro, from the ritornello's last bar through the soprano's first statement to the strings' answer after the first long "rejoice", then from the return's "rejoice" through "and shout ... rejoice greatly", and the closing ritornello's cadence, transcribed from Prout's full score (Novello, 1902) into rejoice_greatly.musicxml and timed by scripts/score_excerpt.py at Prout's Allegro. Strings as Handel scored them, with a harpsichord continuo; the soprano's line on a flute with an oboe.