Strictly speaking, only Part 1 is fit for Christmas – the calm hush of "Comfort ye", the chill anticipation of "For behold, darkness shall cover the earth", the bustling urgency of "O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion", the sudden starburst of the angels, the balmy Pastorale – but over-indulgence is forgivable with a work so sophisticated, wise and humane.
In telling details like the quicksilver shocks and sparks that accompanied the line "For He is like a refiner's fire" and the fine gradations of shadow that fell across the arioso "For behold, darkness shall cover the earth," he demonstrated the kind of insight that distinguishes a truly fine Handel performance from a routine one.
For behold, darkness shall cover the earth (bass) :11.
Harlan's "Behold the Darkness"; chamber orchestra; Colin Fowler, organist; Ronnie Oliver Jr., music director.
And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and there was thick darkness, behold a smoking furnace, and a flaming torch that passed between these pieces.
(O.K., not even remotely scary.) And technically not on a par with a sexploitation suavity like "Suspiria" (beware the Mother of Sighs!), his acknowledged 1977 masterpiece, or "Inferno," its pseudo-sequel (behold the Mother of Darkness!), from 1980.
"Translators too often look for the so-called Russian sensibility, and, lo and behold, they find it: the darkness, the obsessiveness, the mystic genius.
We also got to hear Tweedy on his own when he sang a Deerhoof song, "Behold a Marvel in the Darkness," for the band's split seven-inch series of collaborative singles.
Each morning, he unzipped the flap of his tent and peeked out, hoping for clear skies, only to behold what he called "more of the white darkness".
You follow the puddle into the darkness and around a corner, where you behold, brightly spotlighted on a far black wall, a small, white, oddly tilted sink.
She can write terse head-on confrontations, biblical invocations of great power ("Behold the light of despair/the glare of anguish/And ye shall be driven to darkness") and soliloquies that evoke T. S. Eliot.
