Twenty years ago, the St. Louis Symphony played an entire program based around music set to “Gloria in excelsis Deo.” The use of text as a springboard for music has existed for centuries, and the December 6, 1998, performances of “Gloria” by Vivaldi, Beethoven, and Poulenc proved that music can be just as memorable as text.
This weekend, the SLSO performs Messiah, another large-scale work set to text from the King James Bible, with the instantly-recognizable Hallelujah Chorus.