So write the music historians, “The oratorios of Handel are choral dramas of overpowering vitality and grandeur. Vast murals, they are conceived in epic style.”
Most popular of Handel’s compositions in modern times is his oratorio, “Messiah”, from which we find “Hallelujah”, better known as “The Hallelujah Chorus.”
“It was 1742, and Handel, working as a man possessed, completed the entire oratorio in an inconceivable twenty-four days. Moreover, Handel’s servant found him just after the completion of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’. With tears streaming from his eyes, Handel exclaimed, ‘I did think I did see all Heaven before me, and the Great God Himself!”
Handel is now in Paradise. And so is Keith Green, tragically killed in a plane crash in July, 1982. Green, a modern-day musical prophet, is my favorite all-time Christian singer/songwriter. Listen as he sings, “Hear the bells ringing! They’re singing Christ is risen from the dead! Hallelujah!”
It’s Easter. The tomb is empty. And that changes everything.
Hallelujah, nw