David in Music

Abstract Given the immense number of musical compositions dealing with David, the essay focuses on David’s treatment in more recent operas and oratorios. A brief review of Handel’s Saul (1738) as the prototype of such works argues that David’s portrayal in Saul is messianic (David restoring what Saul lost), thus giving the Saul narrative a wider, Christian significance. Two nineteenth-century oratorios are then considered: Neukomm’s David (1834), which similarly presents David as an idealized, messianic figure, a forerunner of Christ; and Macfarren’s King David (1883), which shows a messianic but flawed and sinful David together with his contrition and resultant rehabilitation, thus providing an exemplar for Christian living. Finally, four twentieth-century compositions are examined, beginning with Nielsen’s opera Saul og David (1902), a secular entertainment in which David is a romantic rather than a messianic figure. Honegger’s “symphonic psalm” Le Roi David (1923) covers David’s faults but still gives him eschatological messianic significance. Milhaud’s opera David (1954) parallels David’s progress towards kingship with the emergence of the modern state of Israel. Menken and Rice’s King David (1997) is a Broadway musical designed to tell an exciting story.