About this Piece

Saint Cecilia’s connection to music stems not from her early third-century martyrdom but from her arranged marriage to the pagan Valerian. Sworn to virginity, she sat apart at the wedding, singing to God in her heart while musicians played. She converted her husband, who respected her vow and preceded her in martyrdom; he too was canonized.  

That simple nuptial incident gradually inspired a wealth of art and iconography. The first known musical celebration in Cecilia’s honor came in 1570, and she became the patron saint of music in 1585 when Pope Sixtus V founded the still-flourishing Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Not surprising, composers across the centuries since have added their tributes. (More surprising, perhaps: Modern-day musical nods to St. Cecilia include songs by the Foo Fighters and Blue Öyster Cult.)  

Handel contributed settings of two odes by the English poet John Dryden, A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day and Alexander’s Feast. Dryden wrote them for the Musical Society of London and its annual festival celebrated on Saint Cecilia’s Day in the later 1600s, a tradition that had gone mute by the time Handel composed his version of Alexander’s Feast in 1736.  

Alexander’s Feast was a two-part work, and for opera and theater audiences expecting three acts, Handel needed to add something. When it was first performed, Handel interpolated instrumental pieces, a practice not at all uncommon in performances of his oratorios. For the opening of the 1739 season, held November 22—St. Cecilia’s Day—he capped it with Dryden’s first ode to the saint, which he set in less than two weeks.  

That speed was undoubtedly aided by taking a number of themes from recently published keyboard suites by the Viennese composer Gottlieb Muffat. This kind of “borrowing” was a standard practice for Handel, as was his distinctive transformation of the material and reworking of the fugue from the brilliant overture in the French style as the opening movement of one of the orchestral concertos he composed immediately after the ode. 

Regardless of haste and sources, this is confidently dramatic music in Handel’s most theatrical vein. Dryden’s text makes explicit mention of musicians and music, of course, and Handel picks up all his cues for descriptive word painting, from the “trumpet’s loud clangor” and the “double, double, double beat of the thund’ring drum” to the “soft, complaining flute” and “sharp violins.”  

There is also a philosophical conceit framing the expressive, direct arias. In this relatively compact piece, Dryden—and Handel—takes us from primordial chaos to expansive eternity, with the “music of the spheres” guiding creation. “From harmony, from heav’nly harmony, this universal frame began” the tenor soloist declares, affirmed by the chorus. Jubal and Orpheus have their moments, and “bright Cecilia” raises the bar higher, until the end of days, as the chorus sings with the utterly apt fugal grandeur only Handel could summon, “the dead shall live, the living die, and music shall untune the sky.” —John Henken