occupying twenty-four bars.
Then
&c. treated fugato for twenty bars; and each line is worked in the same way.
A Massive Chorus
The whole chorus is 221 bars in length, and is a masterpiece of massive choral and orchestral writing, in keeping with the sentiment of the words. It opens with three trumpets, drums, violoncello, and organ manual, the pedal being silent for the first twenty-three bars. At the twenty-fourth bar (the first quoted on page 97) the pedal enters with the 16 feet Posaune, and makes a bold canon of eight bars, with the melody played in the highest register of the trumpet. The canon concludes with a drum passage on the dominant; and fresh canons between trumpet and pedal occur at bars 49, 88, 122, 147, 178 and 200.
These seven canons are all formed on the musical phrases of the tune: and one might almost look upon the chorus as a gigantic “choral-vorspiel” with long vocal and instrumental interludes between the phrases given out by the trumpets and pedal.
A Florid Duet