Handel’s Musical Depictions of Birdsong
Sweet bird, that shun’st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy! Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among, I woo to hear thy even-song. Or, missing thee, I walk unseen, On the dry smooth-shaven green, To behold the wand’ring moon Riding near her highest noon. -John Milton, Il Penseroso George Frideric Handel set these lines to music in his 1740 secular oratorio, L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato (“The Cheerful, the Thoughtful, and the …