Hal Brunson

Handel's MESSIAH Hal Brunson

An inexpensive, ideal Christmas gift, this book is intended to be read while listening to Handel's MESSIAH. It's small enough to be easily portable to a live setting, and short enough to be a very accessible companion piece while listening to a recording. Subtitled as "didactic" and "meditative," the book is didactic in that it teaches both musicological and theological aspects of Handel's great oratorio; the book is meditative in that the author encourages the reader to approach MESSIAH as a medium of spiritual contemplation. One of the most intriguing and edifying elements of the book is the author's analysis of Handel's "tone painting" and "word painting." Tone painting and word painting refer to a composer's "use of musical gesture(s) in a work with an actual or implied text to reflect, often pictorially, the literal or figurative meaning of a word or phrase." The reader unfamiliar with Handel's use of tone painting and word painting will experience profound new insights to Handel's artistic genius. More importantly, the reader who approaches MESSIAH as a medium of spiritual and scriptural meditation will ascend to new heights of worship through music.