Ev'ry valley shall be exalted
 

On my cross-country rides I've sometimes thought of this aria from 'Messiah'


especially when crossing West Virginia.
Mandatory Merry Christmas, orders of President-elect TicTac!

That is appropriate during this season. Although, what resonates for me, somewhat chillingly due to the results of the recent election, are those words from the chorus, For Unto Us a Child is Born, also from Händel's Messiah (originally, the Prophet Isaiah's words, of course):

And the government shall be upon His shoulder . . .

How I do wish "He" would, somehow, wrest the burden for all of our sakes. But, in lieu of this actually happening, it might be of comfort to recall those verses usually heard at the Easter season (slightly abridged):

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they have done.

Last time I heard "Are we like sheep", it made me think of a paceline.....

****/m

If you're gonna have an "earworm", you're fortunate to have such a beautiful and magnificent one!

Hear, hear. And to think that Händel wrote his great masterpiece in the space of 24 days--probably the same amount of time it would have taken a good copyist in those days just to have copied the score, much less to have composed a work of this stellar quality.

The actual words are even better:

"All we, like sheep, have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way (punctuation was mine, after having sung this chorus maybe 40 times in concert)." I don't want to speculate that anyone in politics today is being referred to in the next lines: "And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."

I've thought-sung a LOT of Haendel while cycling (and Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and ... and a bunch more!). It's one of the best things about being a choral singer - you always have tunes as you pedal! And you can play the entire piece to yourself at one time - can't do that if you're singing it in real.

But I also found it's really hard to maintain breath control for both fast riding and difficult singing all at the same time! So I can only really thought-sing.