L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato

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L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato is a pastoral ode by George Frideric Handel based on the poetry of John Milton. L'Allegro was composed in the winter of 1740 and premiered on the 27th of February at the Royal Theatre of Licoln's Inn Fields. One of Handel's librettists, Charles Jennens, arranged Milton's two poems, L'Allegro and il Penseroso, interleaving them to create dramatic tension between the personified characters of Milton's poems (L'Allegro or the 'Joyful man' and il Penseroso or the 'Contemplative man'). The work is in three movements: the first two movements consist of this dramatic dialog between Milton's poems and in the third movement Milton added a new poem, il Moderato, in an attempt to unite the two poems into a singular "moral design".