httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6_nJ11BgTE

London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Colin Davis, Halelujah Chorus

On this date in 1742 Handel’s Messiah premiered in Dublin.

Frye on Handel in his remarkable student essay on Romanticism:

The rhythm force of music is incarnated and symbolized in the dance.  Hence, men like Bach, Handel, Mozart were all dance composers.  The suite or selection of dances in one key was a standard artform, and later, when the sonata sublimated the dance rhythm  of the suite into a stricter form, the minuet, in many ways the typical dance, was often retrained. (CW 3, 54)