Israel in Egypt

With Israel in Egypt and Messiah, however, the emphasis is quite different, Israel because of its uninterrupted chain of massive choruses, which do not lend themselves to stage presentation, and Messiah because it is a meditation on the life of Christ the Saviour rather than a…

in George Frideric Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt (1739) and the bird calls, battle sounds, and so forth appearing in European music (instrumental and vocal) for several centuries. But the development of music with a pervasive program, like the term program music itself, is a uniquely 19th-century phenomenon, beginning precisely…