Hallelujah chorus why do you stand

King George was a Christian king, head of the English Church, and would have been knowledgeable of the Scriptures. He knew, from the moment the choir began singing that passage, that it was referring to his Lord , to a King greater than himself. As a Christian King who believed in the Divine Right of Kings, he would have acknowledged even at his own coronation that he rules England only by the grace of the Great King and no other.

If the Triune God were to walk into the same room, the King of England would be compelled to rise and bow in His honor. Or not, at our peril. The people also stood with King George at that moment. I like to think they stood together in solidarity at that moment as fellow subjects of the Greater King. And He shall reign forever and ever, King of kings , forever and ever, And Lord of lords, Hallelujah!

David Erb Educating Royalty Dr. Roy Atwood. He received a B. Show 1 footnote. I have never heard that explanation before. To my sorrow they breathed a sigh of relief when I stood for Chorus. They thought it was all over and got ready to leave the Hall! Your explanation is so interesting. The fact that a monarch would not do anything on such an auspicious occasion without serious thought, adds an even deeper level of reverence to the action of standing.

The Classical period was over far too early for any film footage to existing. Textbooks usually say that the Romantic period ended in Contact us: contact cmuse.

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Performance Performance. Analytics Analytics. Matthew Passion, most especially — and so little great sacral music written for Christmas," he said.

Handel wrote the original version of Messiah in three to four weeks. Most historic accounts estimate the composer spent only 24 days writing the oratorio.

What makes this even more astounding is the sheer scale of the page score. NPR music commentator Miles Hoffman estimates there are roughly a quarter of a million notes in Messiah.

At a little more than three weeks of hour days, Hoffman said that means Handel would have had to keep a continuous pace writing 15 notes a minute. Leonard Bernstein once raised eyebrows by reordering sections of Messiah for a Carnegie Hall performance. He also poured his soul into composing Messiah at a difficult period in his life. So he did what any good composer would do: He locked himself in a room and pouted awhile, then began writing in a burst of white-hot inspiration.

Trance-like, he finished the score in a remarkable 24 days, going for long periods without food or sleep. The full score is a handful, to say the least, with 53 movements.

The Florida Orchestra is all in, performing the nearly complete version at about 2. This brings us to the business of standing during that famous chorus, a tradition said to have begun in , when King George II rose from his seat, enthralled by the beauty of the music.