Handel's "Comfort Ye" and "Every Valley"

Aug 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uP33mc-SI9U

This recitative and its accompanying aria are a part of a monumental choral work, an oratorio by English composer George Frederic Handel (1685 – 1759). The oratorio from which these pieces come is called The Messiah. The work employs four soloists, a chorus and an orchestra.

The lyrics for the whole oratorio are taken from the Bible. This selection is from Isaiah 40:1-4.

Here are the lyrics:

Recitative: Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God; speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness: prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Aria: Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low: the crooked straight and the rough places plain.

If you are familiar with this music, you no doubt will notice that in this performance the vocalist, Philip Langridge, adds quite a few notes in the form of ornaments. During the period when this piece was written, soloists and even members of ensembles customarily added ornaments in the form of trills and runs.

Edward Wolfe

Edward Wolfe has been a fan of Christian apologetics since his teenage years, when he began seriously to question the truth of the Bible and the reality of Jesus. About twenty years ago, he started noticing that Christian evidences roughly fell into five categories, the five featured on this website.
Although much of his professional life has been in Christian circles (12 years on the faculties of Pacific Christian College, now a part of Hope International University, and Manhattan Christian College and also 12 years at First Christian Church of Tempe), much of his professional life has been in public institutions (4 years at the University of Colorado and 19 years at Tempe Preparatory Academy).
His formal academic preparation has been in the field of music. His bachelor degree was in Church Music with a minor in Bible where he studied with Roger Koerner, Sue Magnusson, Russel Squire, and John Rowe; his master’s was in Choral Conducting where he studied with Howard Swan, Gordon Paine, and Roger Ardrey; and his doctorate was in Piano Performance, Pedagogy, and Literature, where he also studied group dynamics, humanistic psychology, and Gestalt theory with Guy Duckworth.
He and his wife Louise have four grown children and six grandchildren.

https://WolfeMusicEd.com

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Edward Wolfe