# Choral partbooks to Messiah?



## Anselm (Feb 24, 2011)

Strange request, but does anyone know of a source, online or otherwise, for individual choral partbooks (as opposed to vocal scores) of Handel's Messiah? They have to be in the old clefs - i.e. alto and tenor using C clefs, rather than the modern treble clefs.

The reason is that I'm conducting a performance of Mozart's arrangement of the work. I know that it was common practice in his time to have alto, tenor and bass trombones play along with the equivalent voices in the choir, which is what I want to do. However, I'm also aware that you seldom come across written trombone parts for such purposes (as opposed to original trombone music) in manuscripts of choral music in Mozart's time. The score and parts to Mozart's arrangement is on IMSLP, but the trombones only have music for two movements: the Overture and the quartet of choruses at "Since by man came death". It's ridiculous to expect that trombones would only play in two movements. Of course, these are precisely the two movements with separate trombone music that _doesn't_ just double the voices.

So what did the trombone players use in rehearsal and performance? I'm guessing they used the choir's voice parts, which as far as I'm aware in that era consisted of separate partbooks for sopranos, altos, tenors and basses - as they had done in vocal music since the middle ages. My history of music publishing is a little rusty, but I'm sure that the vocal score as we know it (i.e. all four parts, with an orchestral reduction for keyboard below each stave) was a nineteenth-century invention.

If that's what the trombones in fact did in Mozart's day, it would explain the lack of trombone parts - they simply would have grabbed a copy of the choral partbook that applied to them. This would also have been quite advantageous for them for two reasons: the clefs those voices used then (alto, tenor and bass, rather than the modern treble, treble and bass) would have been right for them, and they could phrase the music according to the words, which they would have had in front of them.

There are no vocal parts other than those in the full score on IMSLP, and I can't find any anywhere else - certainly not the old-fashioned ones in the old clefs. I'll try my local library's interloan system, but I don't hold out much hope there, either. If I want trombones doubling the voices, I guess I'll have to put pen to paper myself, but I'd be glad to be saved the trouble. Does anyone have any ideas to stop me getting writer's cramp?


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