h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Mrs G is singing in a performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah this evening. This is a great work with some lovely lyrical pieces along with some really dramatic story telling.

Mendelssohn is often dismissed as writing music which 'too nice' but he sure knew how to write for choirs. He was very popular in theUk during his lifetime and Elijah was one of the most performed choral works in England for about a century after his death.

I love scene where the prophets of Baal and Elijah the prophet of Jehovah have a competition to see who can make it rain, a very valuable power in Israel although not here in Ireland. Being able to stop the rain would be the trick.

The concert starts at 8 in the Trinity Exam Hall.

I like the idea of a supernatural rain-stopper.

Have fun with 'Elijah'! I know a couple of pieces from that, and you're right, it's a good 'un.

I've sung the whole thing, and I've also sung selections on numerous occasions. I just take a dark view of the theological and meteorological issues portrayed. What kind of mentality imagines that sin has anything to do with climate?

It's definitely responsible for global warming.

Amen, Wandrin' Star.

Okay, I walked into that one.

But at least walking doesn't pollute the atmosphere much.

Who knows what human sacrifice does to the atmosphere? Ah, I can think of an example: World War I.

Massive death resulted in a disease incubated in the trenches. Let's see, how many millions died in the influenza pandemic of 1918? Up to 50 million or so, according to the CDC? Hm...

I'd make the case that the story of Elijah can be read as a parable against a kind of magical thinking - and against barbarous practices like human sacrifice. Elijah gets sarcastic about Baal: he's asleep, or out hunting, etc.

Then he soaks his barbecue in water, and prays. Quietly, without all the carry-on...and it happens.

I think it's an object lesson: don't be such drama queens.

And before anybody says, 'But he sacrficed the oxen,' I have one word to say:

The ancient Greeks used to sacrifice a cow or bull to the gods. They gave the gods the bits they knew the gods liked: the bones. They ate the bits the gods didn't like, the meat, themselves.

Heh-heh. Makes sense.

Being a priest -- or a priestess -- used to be a pretty good gig.

So the performance was last night (OP was 14 hours ago - approx 7pm your time). That would imply that you didn't go. I've sung Elijah in German. The "Baal" shouts are great fun. And the very beginning, when everything is dry and the children are crying, is very moving.

And if you have a soloist with a really good bass voice to sing Elijah - it can be quite divine.

Although Mendelssohn's mother tongue was German, the German version is a rather stilted translation. The words fit better to the music when sung in English. The same applies to Händel, of course. Although, in the Messiah, there's nothing wrong with the translation, but the consonant-heavy German makes it harder to sing and less beautiful to hear.

There's a reason why most masses are composed using the Latin, I'm sure. All those vowels.

I hope that the audience in Dublin gave the musicians a bit of space at the end before they started clapping. The Keiser that we sang last weekend has a very short "Amen" at the end and when it finishes, it's quite a surprise, especially as the audience will hardly have known the work. Our conductor had said he'd like at least 30 seconds before we close our books and "stand at ease" - the audience co-operated with this. I couldn't move to look at my watch and time it, as I was still holding my score (and my breath) but there was a good period of silence before they started clapping.

I was there all right. It was a great concert. It was the University Choral Society with a few others helping out.

I know now that my description earlier was wrong. The prophet face-off was to call down fire from heaven. Once Elijah won that, he had the false prophets slaughtered, then tackled the rain-making on his own.

The bass soloist was a young man who is a friend of my daughter's. He has a great voice but was getting a bit tired by the end as this was the second performance in a row.

Mrs G and 6 other ladies from my small choir sang the unaccompanied trio at one point in the second half. They kept perfectly in tune.

Messiah was written in English but Handel wasn't good at the language so some of the phrases are odd. In-corr-up-TIB-le is normally now sung In-corr-UPT-ible for example.

Elijah was written in German but translated into English for the first performance, which was in Birmingham. The translator was a composer so he could fit the words well to the music.

A conductor once pointed out how Bach makes good use of the consonant-heavy sounds of German, turning what could be a weakness into a strength.

Mendelssohn suffered (like Saint-Saens) from being a classically-inclined composer in a Romantic age. Their reputations should improve with the passing of time, as the ideals of the Romantics are exposed as rubbish. There was a 'romantic' period in chess too, and it took Morphy to reveal its basic weakness.

It all seemed too easy to Mendelssohn and Saint-Saens. People make the same criticism of Meryl Streep.

That's a good point about Mendelssohn, Recumbentman.

I frequently wonder what language the composers of modern 'praise songs' speak. I'm suspecting glossolalia is their native tongue. A case in point is 'You Are Amazing, God':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpLqAUJcUbo

Consider the titles alone: in addition to 'You Are Amazing, God', we get 'Our God Is an Awesome God' (and they mean it like, 'Wow, that's awesome!') and 'Heavenly Father, I Appreciate You'.

I feel like chucking a copy of 'The Sacred Harp' at them.

A bit like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GkK8wS2WWc

"Messiah was written in English but Handel wasn't good at the language so some of the phrases are odd. In-corr-up-TIB-le is normally now sung In-corr-UPT-ible for example." [Gnomon]

Benjamin Franklin would have agreed with you in general. But that particular example does not correspond to my own experience. In Handel's setting of the word, the syllable "Rup" is the highest note of the phrase, and has the obvious placement for being the accented syllable.

raised incorRUPtible.

And even if Handel's settings were awkward here and there, would they not have gradually improved over tie because of the sheer volume of English settings he did? He didn't just write music; he also conducted it. He would hear the natural inflections of English-speaking people, and would hear how his singers inflected the music. Granted Handel could be a real bear with sopranos who disrespected his tunes, but might they have worn him down so that he heard what they heard?

Beethoven would have had a steep learning curve because of how early his deafness developed, but his output of music to English librettos was not great.

Haydn was not a great setter of English lyrics at first, but he found a way to adapt: he did arrangements of A Scottish, English, and Irish songs that already had the inflections worked out. All he had to do was find felicitous instrumental accompaniments....

You're remembering the revised version. Handel's version had four equal length notes with TIB on the high note. See Watkins Shaw's footnotes in the score.

Sorry, five equal length notes. Can't count!