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Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day is not an oratorio but rather a sequence of movements, comprising instrumental pieces, declarative recitatives, expressive arias, and powerful choruses that extol music and its patron saint. The work is structured in two halves, each beginning with an instrumental movement and ending with a striking chorus. The three-section overture is followed by an accompanied tenor recitative recalling the heavenly origins of music, a theme endorsed in the following chorus: "From harmony, from heavenly harmony." After this is a captivating soprano aria, accompanied by obbligato solo cello, strings and continuo, that asks the rhetorical question: "What passion cannot music raise and quell?" In contrast, the vigorous tenor aria that follows is a call to arms with trumpet and timpani, "The trumpet's loud clangor", that expands from a single voice to the whole chorus, and brings the first part to a close.