"Comfort Ye" and "Ev'ry Valley" from Messiah
Listening Guide
Tenor Anthony Rolfe Johnson with The Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists; John Eliot Gardiner, Conductor
Composer: George Frideric Handel
Composition: "Comfort Ye" and "Ev'ry Valley" from Messiah
Date: 1741
Genre: accompanied recitative and aria from an oratorio
Form: accompanied recitative—through composed; aria—binary form AA'
Nature of Text: English language libretto quoting the Bible
Performing Forces: solo tenor and orchestra
What we want you to remember about this composition:
- As an oratorio, it uses the same styles and forms as operas but is not staged
- The aria is very virtuoso with its melismas, and alternates between orchestral ritornellos and solo sections
One thing to remember about this composition:
- The accompanied recitative uses more instruments than standard basso continuo-accompanied recitative, but the vocal line retains the flexibility of recitative
- Motor rhythm in the aria
- In a major key
- In the aria, the second solo section is more ornamented than the first, as was often the custom.
Recitative: "Comfort Ye"
Timing
Performing Forces, Melody, and Texture
Text and Form:
Mostly stepwise, conjunct sung melody; Homophonic texture
Vocalist & light orchestral accompaniment: "Comfort Ye my people"
Orchestra and vocalist alternate phrases until the recitative ends
Vocalist and light orchestral accompaniment: "Comfort ye my people says your God; speak ye comforter of Jerusalem; and cry upon….that her inquity is pardoned.A voice of him that cryeth in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way for the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God."
Aria: "Ev'ry Valley"
Timing
Performing Forces, Melody, and Texture
Text and Form:
Soloist presents melodic phrase first heard in the ritornello and the orchestra echoes this phrase
Tenor and orchestra: Ev'ry valley shall be exalted
Long melisma on the word exalted…repeats
High note on mountain and low note on "low"
Tenor and orchestra: Shall be exalted
And ev'ry mountain and hill made low
Repeated oscillation between two notes to represent crookedness; then one note is sustained on the word straight.
Tenor and orchestra: The crooked straight
Repeated oscillation between two notes to represent roughness; then one note is sustained on the word plain.
Tenor and orchestra: And the rough places plain
Goes back to the beginning, but with even more ornamentation from the melismas
Tenor and Orchestra: "Ev'ry valley shall be exalted" (Repetition of text and music)