Page 32 - CJOct23

Choral Pedagogical Tools and Vocal Exercises A Practical Guide to Teaching Handel's Messiah

When designing any piece of instruction… sanza, “a series of four notes of short duration, moving
break the subject matter into small pieces, or- either by step or by leap.” The messanza is seen in
22
der the pieces, teach them one at a time, and two iterations. The first iteration shown in Figure 10
then pull them together based on their inter- ascends by step, descends by an interval of a third, as-
relationships. 19 cends again by step, and descends to the “head note”
by a third. The second iteration of the messanza in
Instruction for melismatic vocal lines must build Figure 11 follows a different contour. It ascends by an
20
technical skills in “small pieces” to make the singing interval of a third, descends to a lower neighbor note,
of difficult passages more manageable. This learned and ascends twice by step to the “head note.”
technique can be replicated in other iterations. Over When both rhetorical gestures are grouped togeth-
time, these skills become ingrained as muscle memory. er, the melisma follows a predictable macro-structure.
The manageable sections offered as examples in this As a result, singers are provided with a reliable pattern
article are based upon standard contour patterns found when learning the melisma. This reliable pattern be-
in rhetorical gestures of Baroque music. comes the foundation for the following sequential ex-
ercises (seen in the Melisma Exercises on pages 34-35).
Applying Rhetorical Gestures in Sequenced Skill Building For clarity, the figure of eight notes (groppo and messanza
The four sixteenth-note patterns, as seen in “For 1) are labeled as “Motive 1”; the combination of the
Unto Us a Child is Born,” exist as rhetorical gestures. groppo and second iteration of the messanza is labeled
Handel, like other composers of the period, used these “Motive 2” (Figure 12).
rhetorical gestures as “building blocks” to create mo-
tives within melismatic lines. While not all melismatic
lines used this compositional technique, most melis-
matic music used these rhetorical gestures as struc-
tural components. In “For unto us a Child is born,”
Handel introduces the contrapuntal line in the sopra-
no. Through analysis, a harmonic progression is shown
in the circled notes of Figure 8, measures 8-10.
The “head note” from the group of eight notes is
the first note of a combination of rhetorical gesture
building blocks. In this example, these rhetorical ges-
tures follow a predictable pattern for the entirety of the
melisma (excluding the melisma’s final four notes). As
seen in Figure 9, the melisma begins with a rhetorical
gesture called groppo, “a four-note motif with a com-
mon first and third note.”
21
The groppo in the melismatic line becomes the first
gestural building block for each of the “head note”
groupings. The second group of four notes is a mes-

30 CHORAL JOURNAL October 2023 Volume 64 Number 3