Messiah (HWV 56), the English-language oratorio composed by George Frideric Handel in 1741, is structured in three parts.

This listing covers Part III in a table and comments on individual movements, reflecting the relation of the musical setting to the text.

He had started in 1713 to also compose sacred music on English texts, such as the Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate.

In Messiah he used practically the same musical means as for those works, namely a structure based on chorus and solo singing.

The orchestra scoring is simple: oboes, strings and basso continuo of harpsichord, violoncello, violone and bassoon.

"), the aria that opens Act II of Riccardo primo, Se m’è contrario il Cielo, e che sperar potrò frà tante pene ("If heaven is against me, what hope is there for me in all this trouble?

[10] Much recorded as a stand-alone number, the melody of the aria has also been reworked as a hymn tune, most often set to either a paraphrase by Charles Wesley which shares the incipit of the aria,[11] or to a translation of a 7th or 8th century latin text by John Chandler, beginning "O Christ, our hope, our heart's desire".

Consequently, Handel twice uses a Grave a cappella setting in A minor with chromatic lines, opposed to an Allegro with orchestra in C major in most simple harmony, switching back and forth between these extremes.

Scene 2 deals with Paul's teachings on the Resurrection of the body on the Day of Judgement, as written in his First Epistle to the Corinthians.

Handel breaks the text in the middle of the second verse, to open the aria with the musical idea "the trumpet shall sound".

[4] The passage from 1 Corinthians 15 was also chosen by Johannes Brahms for Ein deutsches Requiem, but in the German translation of the Bible the instrument is a trombone.

[13] Such a movement would remind the London listeners of love duets concluding operas, such as the final scene of Giulio Cesare.

Towards the end, Handel quotes the characteristic intervals beginning Martin Luther's chorale Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir several times, leading into the final chorus.

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain The chorus, with the full orchestra including trumpets and timpani, proclaims in a solemn Largo "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain", and continues Andante "to receive power – and riches, – and wisdom, – and strength, – and honour, – and glory, – and blessing".

These words are rendered in short downward runs, but then also in the same rhythm as in the Hallelujah chorus, and finally broadened to Adagio.

A contemporary critic, conditioned by John Brown who objected to operatic features in oratorios such as recitatives, long ritornellos, and ornamented vocal lines, commented on Handel's display of musical inventiveness and "contrapuntal skill":[14] "The fugue too, on Amen, is entirely absurd, and without reason: at most, Amen is only a devout fiat, and ought never, therefore, to have been frittered, as it is, by endless divisions on A— and afterwards men.

"[3] But Handel's first biographer, John Mainwaring, wrote in 1760 that this conclusion revealed the composer "rising still higher" than in "that vast effort of genius, the Hallelujah chorus".

Block summarized in 1997: "in this piece we see the remarkable confluence of Hebrew theology and biblical truth, Italian operatic genius, English class, and German piety.