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Untitled Article
must be found for them to do—competent or incompetent they must all show up . To accomplish this , our musical functionaries set to work to improve and piece out one of Handel ' s oratorios . They had announced the performance of ' Israel in Egypt ; ' but they discovered that this oratorio had very few songs . Never mind— ' make some , introduce some '—and it was so .
Commonp lace , trashy airs out of his operas were fitted to more trashy words , and thrust into this splendid work . Thus were a few of the Misses provided for ; the defacing Handel ' s great oratorio being a mucn less evil than the exclusion of a young lady ( especially if a pupil of the Academy ) from the bill . They then set to work to concoct what they called a selection , upon the principle
of what is called a ' medley-overture , ' where all sorts of tunes , quick and slow , new and old , English and foreign , are jumbled together , some entire , some by halves , and played in rapid succession . Thus we had a whole chorus of Handel , then a quarter of a movement of Haydn , a scrap of a song from Mozart , an anthem of Purcell , and part of a quartett of Beethoven . The €
words , in some instances , came in the following order : —Who takest away the sins of the world , pity us and receive our intercession : and life everlasting . Amen ! And being incarnate of the Holy Ghost , from Mary the virgin , became man . ' In these , and many other instances , detached portions of sentences were
culled from various places and joined together , producing the effect of cross-readings in a newspaper . A selection of sacred music should discover some knowledge of the different stages and schools of the art ; the component parts should be classed with skill , assorted with taste , and every piece so displayed as to range and blend and harmonize with those near it . Who , in arranging a gallery of pictures , would not be guided by a similar principle ?
Who would jumble Flemish , Italian , Dutch , and English together , regardless of character , subject , colouring , or school ? Who , on the stage , would place detached scenes from the fallowing pieces in this order : —Hamlet and the Ghost , Paul Pry and Mrs . Supple , Jaffier and Belvidera , Cowslip and Lingo , and so on . But precisel y such was the grouping of the self-created Commitiee ; every thing was out of its order , and severed from its connexion . The next work of the Select was to construct the orchestra .
They had given out that it was to hold a larger number of performers than any previous festival . * A journeyman-carpenter and a two-foot rule would have proved the impossibility of this ; but they scorned all vulgar notions of square and rule , and seemed to think that the walls of the Abbey were elastic . Unluckily , they were not found so in practice . An orchestra which would place the band before the view of the audiences must be situated between
the pillars ; but this , it was found , would not hold more than 350 performers . What was to be done ? The chorus was crowded into the side-aisles , where they were invisible to nineteen-twentieths
Untitled Article
The Royal Festival Job . 587
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1834, page 587, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2636/page/57/
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