Underrated Classical Music: Israel in Egypt

Bach belongs to Christianity. But since you gentiles are doing such a piss poor job as custodians of Handel, Handel belongs to us. There are a full dozen oratorios by Handel on the level of Messiah, almost all of which are played with rarity, likely because they're about Old Testament subjects, and some of which have one important quality that should sell them to anybody: they're shorter than Messiah.

Make no mistake, Messiah is towering, but it's perceived that Messiah is a miracle because it was written in twenty-four days, but that's often how it sounds like it was written. You can almost hear Handel on deadline, realizing he had no part three ready and deciding to pad it by stretching out The Trumpet Shall Sound to twelve minutes.

Handel's oratorios are cornerstones of the music world as important as Mozart Operas, Beethoven Sonatas, Haydn Symphonies, Stravinsky Ballets, Shostakovich Quartets, Bartok Pedagogic Pieces, Messiaen Organ Catalogues, Schubert songs, Chopin Piano Miniatures, Monteverdi Madrigals, Tallis Motets, Janequin's Onamatopoetic Vocal Ensembles, Palestrina Masses, Praetorius's Terpsichore Dance Music, Scarlatti's Keyboard Sonatas, Villa-Lobos's Choros, Cowell's Piano experiments, Ligeti's Etudes, Nancarrow's Player Piano etudes, Janacek's Czech operas, Mussorgsky's Russian Songs, Herrmann's film scores, Revueltas's orchestral miniatures, Kurtag's Jatekok, Rautavaara's Concertos, Tormis's Choral Works, Schnittke's Concerti Grosso, Tan Dun's work for Chinese instruments and orchestra, and Bach's Summa Project (and Bloch's Jewish music...). They are the greatest examples of word painting in music history - the art of finding a musical equivalent to every bit of text. Israel in Egypt is, in my opinion, easily a better work than Messiah, which is of course towering. It is a feast for chorus. Most of the ten plagues get their own choral movement and musical metaphor, a seasick leaping of intervals for the blood in the nile, hopping dotted rhythms for frogs, flies with a flitting and barely discernible tornado of violin notes, hailstones as a massive crescendo of noise.... Just listen...

I once had a Cantor tell me he was convinced that Handel was Jewish, which is just stupid... but since nobody else is doing a good enough job championing his music, Handel oratorios belong to 'us' as much as Rembrandt's biblical paintings. I have no idea what Handel's opinion of Jews was, or if he even had an opinion on Jews, but this is music which Jews should be sounding the shofar about around the world. Every large synagogue in the world should be sponsoring performances of Handel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVC1U6LlwKE