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"Musical Allegory" Reconsidered: Representation and Imagination in the Baroque

A a famous moment in Handel's oratorioJoshua, the hero commands the sun to stand still above the city of Gibeon, which the Israelites are defending against the Canaanites (Example 1). The long held note of the violin part is, to use the familiar expression of Manfred Bukofzer, a "musical allegory" ofJoshua's command to the sun-"Stop thy swift course, and over Gibeon stay!"---or, perhaps, of the cessation of motion itself. The scene contains further word/tone associations, as when the chorus sings an oscillating motive on the word "scattered" (not the first time Handel had set the word thusly) and on the sudden shift to the minor mode at the word "die."