Oh, We Like Sheep

"We Like Sheep, too!"

Careful pronunciation required. This chorus, unknown to me when I first sang in those Christmas Messiahs years ago, might be my very favorite now. First of all, it is a RIOT- the vocal lines scattering hither and yon all over the page! We all, of course, learned about voice leading from Papa Bach- and that adjacent voices are not to extend more than an octave from another (the exception is the basses, just because we are so very terrific.) And, clearly, Handel was not subject to training under the strictures of his contemporary. I still imagine, though, that the octave-plus differential between voices (m. 22 and similar) was also intended to show our meandering from the path. Not only disjunct, but truly divergent,

The melismas of "we have turned" (m. 11 and similar) are probably the most difficult in all of Messiah. And look how the counterparts to those melismas are exactly opposite: as simple as he could write them.

Finally, the jarring change at measure 76. There had been so much merry cavorting and jolly fun, but when this measure arrives we starkly reminded of what we are talking about: "And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."