Ruth Smith

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216 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 7 May

Ruth Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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In Our Time · Handel's Messiah · 7 May 2026 podcast

And so much of the imagery in Messiah is active imagery.

A potter's vessel being smashed, a refiner's fire.

This isn't pictorial, just it's energetic imagery.

And often Handel also makes us think by giving musical variety to his depiction of a single image.

So at the beginning we have the contrast of darkness and light.

Those that walked in darkness have seen a great light.

But we get it twice over in the words and Handel varies it.

One is melodic, the other is harmonic.

Maybe it's one of his richest musically.

Don would be able to correct me on this.

But unlike the operas and unlike a lot of the other oratorios, there's very little recitative, plain, simple music.

Plot type text.

So it's very rich in arias and even richer in choruses.

And also it's quite concise, I think, in the individual numbers.

So we're getting huge variety all the time.

And one thing that Jennings understood, sorry, this is back to the words, but it's back to the structure that Handel is actually dealing with.

Jennings understood that one of Handel's main compositional methods was progression by contrast.

and that is all the way through Messiah.

It may be a micro-contrast, as in a single number, as in, for example, he was despised, where the outer sections, as is normal in a Baroque aria, are based on the same music, and the inner section is contrasting.

It is a big contrast, so deep pathos followed by outrage and anger at what has happened to Christ.

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