There are plenty of them. Take Handel; look at such an air as “Loathsome
urns, disclose your treasure” or “Come, O Time, and thy broad wings
displaying,” both in _The Triumph of Time and Truth_, or at “Convey me to
some peaceful shore,” in _Alexander Balus_, especially when he comes to
“Forgetting and forgot the will of fate.” Who know these? And yet, can
human genius do more?
“And the Glory of the Lord”
It would be hard to find a more satisfactory chorus even in the
_Messiah_, but I do not think the music was originally intended for these
words:
[Picture: Music score: And the glory, the glory of the Lord]
If Handel had approached these words without having in his head a subject
the spirit of which would do, and which he thought the words with a
little management might be made to fit, he would not, I think, have
repeated “the glory” at all, or at any rate not here. If these words had
been measured, as it were, for a new suit instead of being, as I suppose,
furnished with a good second-hand one, the word “the” would not have been
tacked on to the “glory” which precedes it and made to belong to it
rather than to the “glory” which follows. It does not matter one straw,
and if Handel had asked me whether I minded his forcing the words a
little, I should have said, “Certainly not, nor more than a little, if
you like.” Nevertheless I think as a matter of fact that there is a
little forcing. I remember that as a boy this always struck me as a
strange arrangement of the words, but it was not until I came to write a
chorus myself that I saw how it came about. I do not suspect any forcing
when it comes to “And all flesh shall see it together.”