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1. Introduction介绍
在音乐，复音是指含有两个或多个独立的旋律，通过技术处理和谐集纹理。在西方音乐传统的背景下，复调经常用来指中世纪晚期和文艺复兴时期的音乐。复音巴洛克时期步入高峰期时的天才音乐家和作曲家的量给他们自由的人才在他们的杰作。在西方许多音乐家也常采用复调，如卡农由约翰·帕赫贝尔使音乐更丰富，更丰富多彩。乔治·弗雷德里克·亨德尔，为那些更大之一，占据了音乐史上的一个不可忽视的地位。毫无疑问，亨德尔的优秀声乐写作，帮助他做出桂冠的梦想成真，尤其是在女高音咏叹调。
本文将亨德尔和弥赛亚的简要说明。它还将推出这首歌大大喜乐，详细锡安城阿。它将把它的重点放在女高音咏叹调声乐写作的分析。最后但并非最不重要的，它可以得出结论，亨德尔真的是在历史长河中杰出的音乐家之一。In music, polyphony refers to a texture containing two or more independent melody, which gathers harmoniously through the technical processing. Within the context of the Western musical tradition, polyphony is often used to refer to music of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Polyphony stepped into its peak phase during the baroque era when a quantity of genius musicians and composers give their talents freely in their masterpieces. Many musicians in the west would often adopt polyphony, like Pachelbel's Canon by Johann Pachelbel to make music richer and more colorful. George Frederic Handel, as one of those greater, has occupied a non-ignorable position in the history of music. Undoubtedly, Handel’s excellent vocal writing has helped him to make the dream of laurel come true, especially in soprano arias.
This paper will make a brief description of Handel and Messiah. It will also introduce the song Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion in detail. And it will put its emphasis on the analysis of vocal writing of soprano arias. Last but not least, it can be concluded that Handel is really one of the distinguished musicians in the long history.
2. The introduction of Handel, the Baroque and Messiah引进亨德尔的巴洛克和弥赛亚
2.1 Handel and the Baroque
Baroque era is seen as a gold age of European music. During this period, various music genres have achieved great progress. One of the most outstanding works belongs to vocal writing of Handel. As a whole, features of vocal writing can be studied from two perspectives.
First, dating back to first half of the 17th century, the characters of the opera and oratorio were elegance, softness and voice coherence under the influence of the Italian humanism. Being emphasized to embody the inner world of the characters, the gentleness of attacks and a very regular breathing are combined with the stepped range of dynamics. Meanwhile the stepped range of dynamics is accompanied.
Second is that from latter half of the 17th century to the 18th century, castrati became the dominator; traditional performances had lost its inherent glamour, which was replaced by the flamboyant and exaggerated outlooks. The vocal writing also focused on the gorgeous movement and coloratura. It’s also in this period of time that the famous British German composer, Handel, has showed talents and uniqueness.
Handel has composed and written more than 40 operas, 23 oratorios, and some passions and cantatas during his whole life. In his works, vocal writing has a grand atmosphere, natural tone and strict rhythm. As Handel’s music, they always have a feeling of remarkably smooth with constant rhythm. Last but not the least, Handel was so serious about his art and demands of understanding and respect.
2.2. Messiah
Messiah emphasizes the personal aspects of the healing, forgiveness, personal freedom, strength, and comfort (David, 1997, pp.136-137).It is difficult to define the genre Oratorio as it is almost impossible to be defined without excluding famous works that go or have gone in the catalog of oratorios (Calvin, 2010, pp.3). And it is for this reason; Messiah is regarded as one of the biggest diamonds in the crown of music (Winter, 1997).
In my opinion, Messiah cannot be regarded as a typical oratorio in the traditional respect. On the contrary, it was derived from New Testament by Handel and can be divided into 3 parts. In the history of music, it is the first time to extract the librettos from Bible and it has caused a significant amount of controversy and we have to admit that its sacred content was considered unsuitable for performance in the theater at that time, where most oratorios were performed. Handel persists in focusing in various entries in brackets which show alternative voices that allocated the movements in the performance (Donald, 1991, pp.83-85).
3. Understanding of Messiah认识弥赛亚
3.1 The vocal writing of Messiah
From my point of view, Handle’s oratorios have richer and rounder scales, which not only show typical baroque musical style but also bring Handel a good reputation in music history. In his oratorios, as quick scales’ moves come up more frequently, the performers need to sing clearly and passionately. We can figure this feature out in Messiah No. 18, ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion’. (Ex.1)
Example 1
3.2 The background of Messiah No. 18, ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion’
Lyrics of this song are entirely from the original Bible (Dent, 1934, pp.9- 27). No. 18, ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion’ is the most energetic, excited, and cheerful number in the whole Messiah. The original scripture describes people’s irrepressible sense of delight when they welcome the Messiah King’s coming. And Handel went gradually with the rhythm to express this kind of joy. The prolonged tune in this chapter has struck off a good description of the scene that people sing and dance to cheer for the gracious presence of ‘Prince of Peace’. It was clever enough for Handel to use the soprano to show that a young maiden feels blessed to tell people around that a great moment would be here soon. As I mentioned above, the quick scales’ moves and the rhythm and the melody have perfectly rendered this female character.
As the first soprano aria in Messiah holding a central position in this oratorio, No. 18, ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion’ is now becoming one of the most popular and commonly performed songs.
3.2.1 Source of this soprano aria
This chapter comes from Zechariah 9:9-10: ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, thy King cometh unto thee! He is righteous Saviour, and He shall speak peace unto the heathen’.
Zion, Jerusalem and the city of David are three different appellations of the same place. And the ‘daughter of Zion’ here refers to all God’s people. The art of aria valued the human feelings and become as brilliant as stars in the sky of history (Claude, 2006, pp.7-16)
3.2.2 Artistic characteristics of this soprano aria
Except the oratorio’s original features, this soprano aria has own artistic characteristics. First of all, the register from e1 to g2 is not up there; Secondly, this aria is performed with 4/4 beat, allegro vivace, and a tonality of B flat-F-d-B flat; thirdly, the biggest trait of this number is that the performer needs a sustained; Even this number needs smooth and powerful breath support. Such long and flexible scales’ move are not so frequent in Handel’s operas and oratorios. (Ex.2)
Example 2
3.3 Analysis of vocal treatment in ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion’
In the Baroque era, composers regularly learned from earlier works, and this technique is called pastiche. The other most striking features which gives a characteristic quality to baroque music is the freedom which grants to the performer to improvise the greater part of the expression as s/he goes along, and even quite a substantial part of the notes (Robert, 2000, pp. 6-8).
No. 18, ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion’ is independent of Zechariah 9:9-10; actually, this whole oratorio is very special as it was directly derived from the scripture. In this number, there is no big difference between leading roles and supporting roles.
3.3.1 The handling of coloratura soprano
In the aspect of melody, the first sentence of this period includes 3 serial and short ascending scales, beginning with an unaccented beat and ending with emphasizing the full staccato. At the very beginning of the second sentence, there is also an ascending full staccato, which shows exactly the same technique with first sentence. These 4 full staccatos, combined with each other closely, express delight very strongly. At the same time, Handel used the typical expression techniques in Baroque period: the longer coloratura, with which the performer needs to repeat one certain word or one certain word group over and over again. This kind of technique will make the melody rounder and fuller. (Ex.3)
Example 3
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Handel was influenced by the Neapolitan school so that he wrote such long coloratura in his life. In order to sing these long coloraturas, the performers should breathe in an appropriate and regular way to make whole lyric complete and beautiful. As a result, the singer usually needs to turn down volume, relax the body to avoid the chest voice.
3.3.2 The mastery of volume and dynamics
The second part will also be taken as an example to show the mastery of volume and dynamics. The second part starts from the 44th bar of ‘He is the righteous Saviour…’ and ends with 65th bar, which is composed of two periods. From 44th to 55th bar, the first period actually implies a turning point of people’s emotion. The register of the first sentence has changed from g to c and second begins with F and ends with d. This change has made the whole melody mild and euphemistic. For this part, the singer should express his joy and gladness in very details for having the ‘Prince of Peace’ around. The emotion differs itself from the first part and should be performed out by the singer from brightness to affectionateness; the tempo. Meanwhile, it needs to be noticed and controlled. When the singer gets to the last sentence of ‘He shall speak peace unto the heathen’, he can slow down the control of the tempo as there is a recapitulation followed from 66th bar to the end.
4. Analysis of the performance of polyphony
4.1 Revealing music image
Writing characteristics of polyphony are arguably melody ensemble where rhythm is important means of performance to shape music image. At the same time, to perform some music images or mood or depict the character's personality, the technique of contrast polyphony is often used.
4.2 Promoting the continuous development of the thought of music
When a voice temporarily pauses, another voice continues to go forward, which thus causes to the characteristics of continuousness. This can response to each voice and break out of an idea for continuous, enhancing the music of power and vitality
4.3 Strengthening the uniformity in the structure of music
Polyphony not only develops the characteristics of the thought of music, but also plays an important role in uniformity. Just like the song, ‘Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion’, it is coordinated with the theme of welcoming Jesus and compose the unity of music.
5. Conclusion总结
In his vocal works, the most outstanding is his oratorio. Though some critics were unhappy with his some odd errors in syntax (Allan, 2006, pp.7), the oratorio is extraordinary because of its accessible and appealing-to-all. His creative experience and skills in musical make his oratorio works better and more colorful. In his works chorus develops throughout the whole oratorio chorus, which is often described as the most magnificent brilliant chapter. Based on the above analysis, it can be conclude that polyphony is indeed good. As a learner, we have to gain a full understanding of the value of the song, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion of Handel take the heritage of traditional techniques from ancestors to the next generation. In addition, Chinese scholars study western music history and give a reasonable interpretation on contemporary western music. At present, they should stand in the height of the global cultural anthropology and are in a deep understanding of western culture under the sink to in-depth study of music, clearly reflecting the profound differences between native culture and alien culture to a higher level of recognition,
6.Reference 文献
Alan, Montgomery. (2006) Opera Coaching. Routledge
Calvin R. Stapert. (2010) Handel's Messiah: Comfort for God's People. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Claude V. P. (2006) Music and Ideas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. University of Illinois Press
Donald, Burrows. (1991) Handel:Messiah. Cambridge University Press
Dent, E. J. (1934) Handel, London and Southampton. The Camelot Press
David, Winter. (1997) Forty Days with the Messiah. Abingdon Press
Robert, Donington. (2000) Baroque music. WW Norton & Co
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