Sunday Classics, Christmas Eve edition: A hopeful holiday greeting from G. F. Handel -- and one from L. Van Beethoven

HANDEL: Messiah: No. 2. Accompagnato, "Comfort ye"
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.

-- Isaiah 40:1-3

No. 3. Air, "Every valley shall be exalted"
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.

-- Isaiah 40:4

by Ken

In last night's preview, we heard the Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda sing both the first vocal numbers of Handel's Messiah (the acccompagnato "Comfort ye" and the air "Every Valley") and the little prologue to Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ." Tonight for Christmas Eve we're going to be focusing on that Handel recitative, "Comfort ye," and I'm going to be resurrecting my account of how I first came to hear a tenor singing it singing directly and personally to me.

As it happens, there's another musical excerpt, by coincidence or otherwise also written for tenor, which under the right circumstances can give me this same sensation of its composer reaching out -- through the agency of this singer -- and offering hopefulness. So I thought we would start out once again by hearing the two excerpts sung by the same tenor.


from the choral finale of the Beethoven Ninth Symphony:

Happily, as his suns fly
across the heavens' splendid expanse,
run, brothers, your course,
joyfully, like a hero toward victory.

WHO'S OUR TENOR? WE'VE ALSO GOT MORE OF
HANDEL'S "COMFORT YE" WHEN YOU CLICK HERE

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