Georg Friedrich Händel

Messiah Suite

The premise of this set of transcriptions was to provide a substantial suite of pieces from Handel's Messiah for the performing brass quintet. The difficulty in the various pieces range from quite easy, which a high school ensemble could play with little rehearsal, to fairly difficult, which could challenge a professional, working quintet. Piccolo and E-flat trumpets are used extensively and the range and technical demands on all players makes for interesting and challenging parts. There have been selected movements that are features for 1 (or more instruments). Each member in the ensemble has at least 1 movement that is their solo and this allows all the talents in a group to be displayed. After a quick glance over the list of 10 pieces one quickly notices that the famous Hallelujah! is not among them. This has been done intentionally. There are many renditions of this chorus already at a brass player's disposal, so any of those arrangements would help to augment this suite.