I gave the piano something to do, and used the violin as counterpoint. In the end, I stayed fairly true to the chord structure of the original (a challenge for this jazz lover), and I kept the melody as it’s traditionally performed but I shared it around a bit and put some motion in the harmony parts. (Ah, there’s the kicker!)Īnd then… how much “arranging” do you actually do? Do you simply harmonize the melody over four parts and call it good? That would be a more “purist” sort of approach, but… but…. It hammers the melody line there are places where the left hand holds one note for 30 counts it’s rather repetitive it takes two very skilled soloists to make it work and it’s not written for choir. Most of us don’t have an orchestra at our disposal, and the traditional piano reduction is… well… boring. It’s written for orchestral accompaniment. First, it’s so beautiful in it’s original form when performed well, that you could argue that it needs no arranging. There were some interesting challenges involved. Seriously… arrange Handel? Kinda presumptuous if you ask me. Isn’t that the way of it? You ask a question, and get an assignment.ġ5 years later, I finally found the nerve to try. So in spite of the fact that I was supposed to be focusing on conducting The Messiah, I took a mental time-out to ask, “Heavenly Father, why isn’t this a choral?” His immediate answer was, “Well, do something about it.” (Why didn’t Handel do it? Probably because it wouldn’t include all those lovely high notes and impossible-for-the-average-choir-to-make-sound-nice passages that he was so very fond of.) As I listened to them, I realized that this song would make a gorgeous choral. During a “Messiah Sing-along” that I conducted some years ago, we chose to let the congregation sing this selection.
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