Every year, members of the community combine with the students of my alma mater, MSSU (Missouri Southern State University) to form the Southern Symphonic Chorus, and alongside the Southern Symphony Orchestra, we perform beautiful orchestral works from Beethoven's 9th to Orff's Carmina Burana, and everything in between or of a similar nature. Performing these great masterworks does a great service to my hometown of Joplin, MO, in that it brings class to what some folks claim would otherwise be a classless town. (I'm not so sure about that, but that's what the people have said so in the past about it.)

I had previously done the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's "Messiah" because I had sung that before, but I had never sung the whole thing. In 2022, after a 2-year hiatus resulting from COVID-19, we finally got to sing again, and we did the "Messiah" since it was the original go-to music of choice for such a concept. I therefore decided to do a few more choral excerpts from the oratorio in celebration as instrumental rehearsal tracks that did help me practice this. All text comes directly out of the Bible. I'm not going to do all of them, though; just a few.

This is entitled "Behold, the Lamb of God." I used my traditional system, but settled on just a piano accompaniment instead of the usual act of having a marimba playing it simultaneously. Thus, this is the lineup I used:

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Alto saxophone (representing soprano part)
Tenor saxophone (representing alto part)
Glockenspiel (representing tenor part)
Baritone saxophone (representing bass part)
Vibraphone (also playing bass part, but in treble clef)
Piano (accompaniment; originally for harpsichord)

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This arrangement © me and me alone
Original music is public domain