Excerpts from Elijah
Listening Guide
Performed by the Texas A&M Century Singers with orchestra and baritone soloist Weston Hurt.
Composer: Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
Composition: Excerpts from Elijah
Date: 1846
Genre: Recitative, choruses, and aria from an oratorio
Form: Through-composed
Nature of Text: [See below for the text, in English]
Performing Forces: Baritone soloist (Elijah), four-part chorus, orchestra
What we want you to remember about this composition:
- It's an oratorio composed for amateurs and professionals to perform at a choral festival
- It uses traditional forms of accompanied recitative, chorus, and aria to tell a dramatic story
Other things to listen for:
- A much larger orchestra than heard in the oratorios of Handel
- A very melismatic and virtuoso aria in the style of Handel's arias
- More flexible use of recitatives, arias, and choruses than in earlier oratorios
- More dissonance and chromaticism than in earlier oratorios
Text:
Elijah (recitative): O Thou, who makest Thine angels spirits; Thou, whose ministers are flaming fires: let them now descend!
The People (chorus): The fire descends from heaven! The flames consume his offering! Before Him upon your faces fall! The Lord is God, the Lord is God! O Israel hear! Our God is one Lord, and we will have no other gods before the Lord.
Elijah (recitative): Take all the prophets of Baal, and let not one of them escape you. Bring them down to Kishon's brook, and there let them be slain.
The People (chorus): Take all the prophets of Baal and let not one of them escape us: bring all and slay them!
Elijah (aria): Is not His word like a fire, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock into pieces! For God is angry with the wicked every day. And if the wicked turn not, the Lord will whet His sword; and He hath bent His bow, and made it ready.
Timing
Performing Forces, Melody, and Texture
Text and Form:
Solo Baritone (Elijah); Orchestra. Minor key, orchestra punctuates the ends of each of singer's phrases.
Accompanied recitative:
O Thou, who makest Thine angels spirits; Thou, whose ministers are flaming fires: let them now descend!
Chorus and Orchestra.
Fortissimo and polyphonic until the end, when it becomes homophonic (with rests between phrases) and quieter in dynamics.
Chorus: The fire descends from heaven! The flames consume his offering! Before Him upon your faces fall!
Chorus and Orchestra.
Homophonic and legato with longer note values: a more deliberate style for central claim of Western faith.
Chorus:
"The Lord is God…"
Soloist and Orchestra.
Melody and texture as before.
Accompanied recitative:
Take all the prophets of Baal, and let not one of them escape you. Bring them down to Kishon's brook, and there let them be slain.
Chorus and Orchestra.
Homophonic, minor key.
Chorus:
Take all the prophets of Baal and let not one of them escape us: bring all and slay them!
Soloist and Orchestra.
Minor key and homophonic, with a frantic orchestral accompaniment; melody has a wide range with melismas.
Aria:
Is not His word like a fire, and like a hammer that breaketh the rock into pieces! For God is angry with the wicked every day. And if the wicked turn not, the Lord will whet His sword; and He hath bent His bow, and made it ready.