“And the Queen of Sheba heard of Solomon’s fame in connection with the name of the Lord . . . and she came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices, very much gold, and precious stones . . . And the Queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon . . . and there was no more spirit in her.” (I Kings 10) Solomon’s Reign — in the Sound of the Baroque In mid-eighteenth-century London, at the height of the Baroque era, George Frideric Handel — one of the great masters of Baroque music and a towering figure in the classical tradition — turned to one of the Bible’s greatest figures: King Solomon . In 1748 he composed Solomon, a large-scale oratorio for soloists, chorus, and orchestra that paints, in music, the reign of Solomon at the height of its splendor. This is not an opera in which the story is enacted onstage, but a concert oratorio: the drama is created entirely through voices and orchestra. Handel shapes his portrait of Solomon in three broad scenes, each ...
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