Alexander’s Feast

This concert is made possible with public funds from the Decentralization Program of the NYS Council on the Arts, administered in Columbia County by the Greene County Council on the Arts through the Community Arts Grants Fund.Generous funding has also been received from Hudson River Bank & Trust Co Foundation, Stewart’s Holiday Match, and individual and local business supporters.

ALEXANDER’S FEAST

by Pat Marshall, CITV Soprano

Hear how Timotheus’ various lays surprise,/  And bid alternate Passion fall and rise;
While, at each Change, the son of Libyan Jove/ Now burns with Glory, and then melts with Love;

So begins the plot summary by another Alexander [Pope] of another Alexander’s Feast [Dryden’s] that appeared on the wordbook for Handel’s wildly successful premiere in London, 1736, of the musical drama we perform today in Kinderhook.

The dramatic date of this “secular oratorio” places us far back in Greek history, to 331 BCE, immediately after Alexander’s great victory over Persia. King Darius is dead and Persepolis, his once invincible capital, taken. There, in the conquered city, Alexander, Philip’s warlike son sits aloft/ …On his imperial throne with lovely Thais by his side. With these words, the tenor prepares us for the joyous opening as he, soprano and chorus sing to the “Happy, happy” pair, Alexander the brave and Thais the fair.

Timotheus, the bard, now enters with his lyre to praise the conqueror in traditional heroic mode. The king, he boasts, is child of Jove himself who once, taking a dragon’s fiery form curled ‘round the s’ender waist of Olympia… and …there stamp’d the image of himself, a sovereign of the world, his son, Alexander.

The crowd, with listening ears attends as Alexander, stirred by the bard’s lofty praise, assumes an appropriately godlike pose. Sovereign and conqueror of the world, he has nonetheless been conquered by lyric monody. Timotheus goes on, pleasing his soldier king next with rowdy praise of Bacchus, the soldier’s delight. Again the young monarch succumbs to song: he grows vain, reliving his victorious battles in memory, routing his foes and slewing the slain all over again.

But Timotheus remains master and checks Alexander’s prideful recollections by changing his rhythm from Bacchic revelry to mournful elegy. He now sings of fallen Darius as a man great and good whose fate was too severe.  The crowd and Alexander are subdued by this reminder that fate is fickle: once enthroned like Alexander, Darius now lies on bare earth expos’d…with not a friend to close his eyes. Alexander responds as Achilles, his own hero, did, pitying the enemy he has himself destroyed. And again the poet’s deep understanding of human nature prevails for, aware that pity melts the mind to love, the bard reminds his king that lovely Thais sits beside him. Take the good the gods provide, he advises.  All applaud, rejoicing that love has been crowned and music won the cause. End Part I.

As Part II begins, Alexander sleeps. He must be awakened: Rouse him! But his waking is to a new mood of anger. Once again Timotheus changes the rhythms of his lyre, rousing the young king to vengeful purpose. Alexander seizes a torch with zeal to destroy, as Thais leads the way, another Helen, to fire another Troy, to burn Persepolis down.

Thus, long ago, /Timotheus, to his breathing flute
And sounding lyre/ Could swell the soul to rage… [Dryden]

But at last divine Cecilia came! Saint of the organ, she enlarges the former narrow bounds of vocal music by adding harmonies drawn from heaven itself.  She brings to the feast music never heard before, in harmonies far beyond Timotheus’ lyric repertoire. Let old Timotheus yield the prize or, better, let both divide the prize. For, while Cecilia has brought an angel down the old bard did raise a mortal to the skies!

So we raise our final chorus, as Handel-Cecilia wrote it for us:

MAY THIS EVENING EVER PROVE
SACRED TO HARMONY, SACRED TO LOVE!