Handel Dixit Dominus Vocal Score : Choraline

Handel Dixit Dominus Vocal Score

Handel Vocal Scores for Handel's Dixiit Dominus

Dixit Dominus, a setting of Psalm 110, was completed in April 1707 by George Frideric Handel

The most popular vocal score for is shown below.

Rehearsal recordings to help learn your voice part (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass) are described below.

Full Video Version to hear the work in full is also below

The Novello/Shaw Watkins edition of Handel's Dixit Dominus vocal score.

Vocal Scores Choral

Catalogue Number: NOV072323

ISBN: 9780853603030

Please click here if you wish to order and further vocal score information

Please order by 3pm to be despatched today

In 1707, at the age of 22, Händel began his first three-year vist to Rome, and, in spite of his Protestant background, was soon taken up by the cream of Catholic, Italian society. Dixit Dominus, a setting of Psalm 110, was completed in April 1707. It is believed that the choir and other musicians for whom it was commissioned were in the habit of essentially sight-reading their music on the day, and presumably gave Handel the somewhat smug impression that they could do the same with his new work. (There are of course numerous examples of similar things in the pages of musical history - the soloist for whom the Barber Violin Concerto was written famously dismissed the first two movements as insultingly easy, prompting Barber to write a third that said soloist then protested was unplayably difficult.) In Handel's case the story is similar; it is said that he set out to show them who was boss by writing a monstrously difficult (and, it must be said, tiring) work that would put paid to their unprofessional arrogance.

The piece, resplendent with bright color, vocal virtuosity, expansive structure, and driving energy, was clearly designed by Händel to demonstrate his ability to write in the Italian style, and has marked resonances with the choral works of Vivaldi. John Eliot Gardiner has suggested that it was 'almost as though this young composer, newly arrived in the land of virtuoso singers and players, was daring his hosts to greater and greater feats of virtuosity.' The vivid images of the psalm text are set for five-part chorus, soloists, strings and continuo and take the form of a sacred cantata set in eight movements. Like Durante, Händel unifies the composition with a cantus firmus, a fragment of Gregorian chant, that appears in majestic, sustained notes in the opening movement and returns in the same way in the closing movement, appropriately on the words 'as it was in the beginning.' Throughout the rest of the piece, Händel uses the chorus and soloists alternately and together to illustrate the emotive passages of the psalm.

Barry Creasy/David Smith

For further information of Handel's Dixit Dominus, please click here to visit the Wikipedia website

ChoraLine 'Voice Part' Rehearsal CDs & EasyPlay (Stream & Download)

Quick and Easy way to memorise your vocal line and practise between choir rehearsals

Know Your Notes Perfectly

Enhance Your Enjoyment when Singing

Learn With The Music

Shine In Your Choir

Sing With Confidence

Please click here to hear a ChoraLine sample for Dixit Dominus

Choral Performance CD

If you wish to have a CD of the Dixit Dominus to hear the whole work please click here and please do click on the video below to listen right away if you wish.