Handel, Why Do the Nations So Furiously Rage Together/Let Us Break Their Bonds Asunder

We decided to present a webinar on Parts II and III of Handel’s Messiah during Holy Week, having already done Part I (the Christmas part) in December. Part II deals with Lent, the Passion, and Easter, ending with the Hallelujah Chorus. Part III addresses the end times and the resurrection of the dead.

While doing some background work for Professor Carol’s webinar, I came across this recent performance by the Spire Ensemble in Kansas City with soloist Jonathan Woody. I lived in the Kansas City area many years ago and was involved with the music community there at a shaky time. It certainly appears that the arts scene has significantly improved.

In Part II of the oratorio, the aria “Why Do the Nations So Furiously Rage Together” is followed immediately by the chorus “Let Us Break Their Bonds Asunder.” The texts come from Psalm 2. Handel was an opera composer, first gaining fame in Italy and then becoming the most successful composer and producer of Italian opera in London. Naturally, he had a keen sense of drama, and these two numbers capture the rage and fury of the text. Handel also gives us some effective text painting. For example, the driving rhythms in the accompaniment of the aria give us a sense of fury while rage is conveyed by fast triplets in the voice. In “Let Us Break Their Bonds Asunder,” the melody is angular and disjointed with the main theme moving mostly by leaps rather than steps.

And this is another occasion to point out the benefits of a smaller ensemble, as opposed to the cast of thousands sometimes assembled for this work. Long and fast melismatic passages that appear throughout Messiah. You simply can’t achieve the precision and clarity you find in this performance with big ensembles, and the smaller ones are more typical of the forces Handel would have assembled.