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ORATORIO
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ORATORIO , the name given to a See also:form of religious See also:music with See also:chorus, See also:solo voices and See also:instruments, See also:independent or at least separable from the See also:liturgy, and on a larger See also:scale than the See also:cantata (q.v.). Its See also:early See also:history is involved in that of See also:opera (see See also:ARIA and OPERA), though there is a more definite See also:interest in its antecedents. The See also:term is supposed, with See also:good See also:reason, to be derived from the fact that St Filippo See also:Neri's See also:Oratory was the See also:place for which Ar imuccia's setting of the Laudi Spiritual': were written; and the See also:custom of interspersing these See also:hymns among liturgical or other forms of the recitation of a Biblical See also:story is certainly one of several See also:sources to which the See also:idea of See also:modern oratorio may be traced. Further claim to the " invention " of the oratorio cannot be given to See also:Animuccia. A more See also:ancient source is the use of incidental music in See also:miracle-plays and in such See also:medieval dramatic processions as the 12th-See also:century See also:Prose de L'Ane, which on the 1st of See also:January celebrated at See also:Beauvais the See also:Flight into See also:Egypt. But the most ancient origin of all has hardly been duly brought into See also:line, although it is the only form that led to classically See also:artistic results before the See also:time of See also:Bach. This is the See also:Roman. See also:Catholic rite of reciting, during See also:Holy See also:Week, the story of the See also:Passion according to the Four Gospels, in such a manner that the words of the Evangelist are sung in Gregorian tones by a See also:tenor, all directly quoted utterances are sung by voices appropriate to the speakers, and the responsa turbae or utterances of the whole See also:body of disciples (e.g. " See also:Lord, is it I ?") and of crowds, are sung by a chorus. The only portion of this See also:scheme that concerned composers was the responsa turbae, to which it was optional to add polyphonic settings of the Seven Last Words or other See also:special utterances of the Saviour. The narrative and the parts of single speakers were sung in the Gregorian tones appointed in the liturgy. Thus the settings of the Passion by See also:Victoria and Soriano represent, in a very See also:simple form, a perfect See also:solution of the See also:art-problem of oratorio, as that problem presented itself to an See also:age in which " dramatic music," or even " epic music," would have been a See also:contradiction in terms. It has been aptly said that the See also:object of the composer in setting such words as " Crucify Him " was not to See also:express the feelings of an infuriated See also:crowd, but rather to express the contrition of devout Christians telling the story; though this view must be admitted to be,
xx. 6RATORIO I 6 I:
like the 16th-century music itself, decidedly more modern than the quaintly. dramatic traditional methods of performance. As an art-form this early Passion-music owes its perfection primarily to the See also: Nor did Il Trionfo del Tempo become radically different from the musical masques of See also:Acis and Galatea and Semete, when Handel at the See also:close of his See also:life dictated an See also:adaptation of it to an See also:English See also:translation with several choral and other See also:numbers interpolated from other See also:works. Yet between these two versions of the same See also:work lies more than See also:half the history of classical oratorio. The See also:rest lies in that specialized See also:German art of which the See also:text centres See also:round the Passion and the music culminates in Bach; after which there is no very dignified connected history of the form, until the two streams, sadly silted up, and never afterwards quite pure, See also:united in Mendelssohn. One feature of the See also:Reformation in See also:Germany was that See also:Luther was very musical. This had the curious result that, though the German Reformation was far from conservative in its attitude towards ancient liturgy, it retained almost everything which makes for musical coherence . in a church service; while the English, church, with all its insistence on historic continuity, so rearranged the liturgy that no possible music for an English church service can ever form a coherent whole. We are accustomed, to think of German Passion-music as typically See also:Protestant; yet the four Passions and the Historia der Auferstehung Christi of H. Schutz (who was See also:born in 1585, exactly a century before Bach) are as truly the descendants of Victoria's Passions , as they are the ancestors of Bach's. The difference between them and the Roman Catholic Passions is, of course, eminently characteristic of the Reformation: the See also:language is German (so that it may be "understanded of the See also:people "), and the. narrative and See also:dialogue is set to See also:free See also:composition instead of to forms of Gregorian See also:chant, though it is written in a sort of Gregorian notation. Schiitz's See also:preface to the Historia der Auferstehung Christi shows that he writes his recitative for solo voices, though he calls it See also:Cher See also:des Evengelisten and Cher der Personen Colloquenten. The See also:Marcus Passion is, on See also:internal See also:evidence, of doubtful authenticity, being later in style and quite stereotyped in its recitative. But in the other Passions, and most of all in the Auferstehung, the recitative is wonderfully expressive. It was probably accompanied by the See also:organ, though the Passions contain no hint of See also:accompaniment at all. In the II Auferstehung the Evangelist is accompanied by four viole da gamba in preference to the organ. In any See also:case, Schutz tells us, the players are to " execute appropriate runs or passages " during the sustained chords. Apart from their remarkable dramatic force, Schutz's oratorios show another approximation to the Passion oratorio of Bach's time in ending with a non-scriptural hymn-chorus, more or less clearly based on a See also:chorale-tune. But in the course of the work the Scriptural narrative is as uninterrupted as it is in the Roman Catholic Passions. And there is one respect in which the Auferstehung, although perhaps the richest and most advanced of all Schutz's works, is less realistic than either the Roman Passions or those of later times; namely, that single persons, other than the Evangelist, are frequently represented by more than one See also:voice. In the case of the See also:part of the Saviour, this might, to modern minds, seem natural as showing a reverent avoidance of impersonation; and it was not without an occasional See also:analogy in Roman Catholic Passion-music (in the polyphonic settings of special words). But Schiitz's Passions show no such See also:convention; this feature is See also:peculiar to the Auferstehung; and, while the three holy See also:women and the two angels in the See also:scene at the See also:tomb are represented realistically by three and two imitative voices, it is curious to see See also:Mary Magdalene elsewhere always represented by two sopranos, even though Schutz remarks in his preface that " one of the two voices may be sung and the other done instrumentaliter, or, si placet, simply See also:left out." Shortly before Bach, Passion oratorios, not always so entitled, were represented by several remarkable and mature works of art, most notably by R. Keiser (1673-1739). Chorale-tunes, mostly in See also:plain See also:harmony, were freely interspersed in See also:order that the See also:congregation might take part in what was, after all, a musical church service for Holy Week. The feelings of devout contemplative Christians on each incident of the story were expressed in accompanied recitatives (arioso) leading to arias; and the Scriptural narrative was sung to dramatic recitative and ejaculatory chorus on the ancient Roman See also:plan, exactly followed, even in the detail that the Evangelist was a tenor. The difference between Bach's Passions and those of his predecessors and contemporaries is simply the difference between his music and theirs. Where his chorus represents the whole body of Christendom it has as peculiar an epic See also:power as it is dramatic where it represents with brevity and rapid See also:climax the responsa turbae of the Scriptural narrative. Take, for example, the See also:double chorus at the beginning of the Passion according to St See also:Matthew, where one chorus calls to the other to " come and behold " what has come to pass, and the other chorus asks " whom?" " what?" " whither?" to each exhortation, until at last the two choruses join, while above all is heard, phrase by phrase, the hymn " O Lamm Gottes unschuldig." Still more powerful, indeed unapproached even in See also:external effect by anything else in classical or modern oratorio, is the See also:duet with chorus that follows the narrative of the betrayal. Its tremendous final outbreak in the brief indignant See also:appeal to See also:heaven for the vengeance of damnation on the traitor is met by the See also:calm conclusion of the Evangelist's interrupted narrative and the overpowering tenderness of the See also:great figured chorale (" O Mensch bewein' dein' Sunde See also:gross '), which ends the first part with a See also:call to repentance. Such contrasts might seem to be but the natural use of See also:fine opportunities furnished by the librettist; but the composer appears to owe less to the librettist when we find that this chorale originally belonged to the Passion according to St See also: Handel shows us that a definite oratorio style may exist in many different degrees. He was evidently impressed by the German forms of Passion-music as combining the utmost dramatic interest with the most intense contemplative devotion; and it is significant that it was after he came to See also:England, and before his first English oratorio, that he set to music the famous poetic version of the Passion by See also:Brockes, a version which had been adopted by all the German composers of the time, and which, with very necessary and interesting improvements of See also:taste, was largely See also:drawn upon by Bach for the text of his Johannes-Passion. Handel's Brockes-Passion does not appear ever to have been performed, though Bach found See also:access to it and made a careful copy; and it is difficult to see what See also:motive, except interest in the form, Handel had for composing it. At all events it furnishes an important connecting-See also:link between Bach's solution of the problem of oratorio and the various other solutions which Handel after-wards produced so successfully. He soon discovered how many kinds of oratorio were possible. The freedom from stage restrictions admitted of subjects ranging from semi-dramatic histories, like those of See also:Saul, See also:Esther and Belshazzar, to See also:cosmic schemes based exclusively on the words of the See also:Bible, such as See also:Israel in Egypt and the See also:Messiah. Between these types there is every gradation of organization; and it may be added, every gradation between sacred and secular subjects and treatment. The very name of Handel's first English oratorio, Esther, with the facts of its See also:production as a masque and the origin of its libretto in See also:Racine, show the transition from the stage to the church; and a really scandalous example of the converse transition may be found by any one rash enough to look for the source of some of Haman's music in the Brockes-Passion. Roughly speaking we may reduce the types of Handelian oratorio to a convenient three; not divisible among works as wholes, but always evident here and there. Firstly, there is the semi-operatic method, in which the arias are the utterances of characters in the story, while the conception of the chorus rarely diverges from that of multitudes of actors (e.g. Athalia, Belshazzar, Soul, &c.). The second method is a more or less recognizable application of the forms of the Passion-music to other subjects, without, however, the conception of a special role of narrator, but (as, for instance, in " Envy, eldest born of See also:Hell " in Saul) with the definite conception of the choruses as descriptive of the feelings of spectators rather than of actors. Handel's ' It is possible that a false See also:etymology may by Bach's time have given this See also:colour to the word oratorio. Schatz inscribes a monodic sacred piece" in stilo Oratorio," meaning " in the style of recitative." See also:audience demanded an inconvenient number of arias, most of which are clumsily accounted for by a conventional See also:assignment to dramatic roles with a futile See also:attempt at love-interest; which makes many of the best solos in Saul and See also:Joshua rather absurd. The third Handelian method is that which has since become embodied in the modern type of sacred or secular cantata; a See also:series of choruses and numbers on a subject altogether beyond the See also:scope of dramatic narrative (as, for instance, the greater part of Solomon), and, in the case of the Messiah and Israel in Egypt, treated entirely in the words of Scripture. After Bach and Handel the history of oratorio becomes disjointed. The rise of the See also:sonata style, which brought life to the opera, was almost wholly See also:bad for the oratorio; since not only did it cause a serious decline in choral art by distracting attention from that organization of texture which is essential even to See also:mere euphony in choral writing (see See also:COUNTERPOINT and CONTRAPUNTAL FORMS), but its dramatic power became more and more disturbing to the essentially epic treatment demanded by the conditions of oratorio. Bach and Handel (especially Handel) were as dramatic in characterization as the greatest epic poets, and were just as far removed from the See also:theatre. Any doubt on this point is removed by the history of Handelian opera and the, reforms of See also:Gluck. But the power of later composers to rise above the growing swarms of 18th-century and 19th-century oratorio-mongers depended largely on the See also:balance between their theatrical and contemplative sensibilities. Academicism naturally mistrusted the theatre, but, in the See also:absence of any contemplative See also:depth beyond that of a tactful See also:asceticism, it has then and ever since made spasmodic concessions to theatrical effect, with the intention of avoiding pedantry, and with the effect of encouraging vulgarity. Philipp Emanuel Bach's oratorios, though not permanently convincing works of art, achieved a remarkably true balance of style in the earlier days of the conflict; indeed, with judicious reduction to the See also:size of a large cantata, See also:Die Israeliten in der See also:Waste (1769) would perhaps See also:bear revival almost better than See also:Haydn's Tobias (1774), in spite of the See also:superior musical value of that ambitious forerunner of The Creation and The Seasons. These two great products of Haydn's old age owe their vitality not only to Haydn's See also:combination of contrapuntal and choral mastery with his unsurpassable freedom of See also:movement in the sonata style, but also to his priceless rediscovery of the fact (well known to Bach, the composer of " Mein glaubiges Herze," but since forgotten) that, in Haydn's own words, " See also:God will not be angry with me for worshipping him in a cheerful manner." This is the very spirit of St See also:Francis of See also:Assisi, and it brings the naively realistic birds and beasts of The Creation into line with even the Bacchanalian parts of the mainly secular Seasons, and so removes Haydn from the dangers of a definitely bad taste, which began to beset Roman Catholic oratorio on the one See also:hand, and those of no taste at all, which engulfed Protestant oratorio on the other. From the moment when music became independent of the church, Roman Catholic religious music, liturgical or other, lost its high artistic position. Some of the technical hindrances to greatness in liturgical music after the See also:Golden Age are mentioned in the See also:article MASS; but the status of Roman Catholic non-liturgical religious music was from the outset lowered by the use of the vulgar See also:tongue, since that implied a condescension to the laity, and composers could not but be affected by the See also:assumption that oratorio belonged to a See also:lower See also:sphere than Latin church music. With this See also:element of condescension came a reluctance to See also:foster the See also:fault of intellectual See also:pride by criticizing pious See also:verse on grounds of taste. Even in Protestant England this reluctance still causes educated people to See also:strain tolerance of bad hymns to an extent which apostles of culture denounce as positively immoral: but the initial impossibility of basing a non-Latin Roman Catholic oratorio directly on the Bible would already have been detrimental to good taste in religious musical texts even if See also:criticism were not disarmed. It must be confessed that Protestant taste (as shown in the texts of many of Bach's cantatas) was often unsurpassably bad; but in its most morbid phases its badness was mainly See also:barbarian, and could either beignored by composers and listeners, or easily improved away, as Bach showed in his alterations of Brockes's vile verses in the Passion according to St John. But the bad taste of the text of See also:Beethoven's Christus am Oelberge (The See also:Mount of See also:Olives, c. r800) is ineradicable, for it represents the standpoint of writers who may be very devout and See also:innocent, but whose purest source of sacred art has been the pictures of Guido Reni. It was one thing for See also:Sir Joshua See also:Reynolds to admire the wrong See also:period of Italian art: he had his own access to great ideas; but for Beethoven's librettist, who had no such access, it was very different. The real sacred subject has no See also:chance of penetrating through a tradition which is neither naive nor ecclesiastical, but is simply that of a See also:long-tolerated comfortable vulgarity. An operatic tenor represents the Saviour; an operatic See also:soprano represents the ministering See also:angel; and in the See also:garden of See also:Gethsemane the two sing an operatic duet. The music is brilliant and well worthy of Beethoven's early See also:powers, but he afterwards greatly regretted it; and indeed its circumstances are intolerable, and the English attempt at a new libretto (Engedi, or See also:David in the See also:Wilderness) only substituted ineptitude for irreverence. See also:Schubert's wonderful fragment See also:Lazarus (182o) suffers less from the sickliness of its text; for the music seizes on a certain genuine quality aimed at by all typical Roman Catholic religious verse-writers, and embodies it in a See also:kind of romantic See also:mysticism unexampled in Protestant oratorio. Modern literature shows this peculiar strain in See also:Cardinal See also:Newman's See also:Dream of Gerontius, just as Sir See also:Edward See also:Elgar's setting of that poem to music of Wagnerian continuity and texture presents the only parallel discoverable later or earlier to the slightly oppressive aroma of Schubert's unique experiment.'. Lazarus also surprises us by a rather invertebrate continuity of flow, anticipating early Wagnerian opera; indeed, in almost every respect it is two generations ahead of its time; and, if only Schubert had finished it and allowed it to see publicity, the history of 19th-century oratorio might have become a more interesting subject than it is. The ascendancy of Mendelssohn, as things happened, is really its See also:main redeeming feature. Mendelssohn applied an unprecedented care and a wide See also:general culture to the structure and criticism of his libretto (see his See also:correspondence with Schubring, his See also:principal helper with the texts of St See also:Paul and See also:Elijah), and was able to bear See also:witness of his new-found See also:gospel according to Bach by introducing chorales into St Paul as well as by disinterring and performing Bach's works. But he had not the strength to See also:rescue oratorio from the See also:slough into which it had now fallen, no less in Protestant than in Roman Catholic forms.
As the interest in Biblical themes becomes more independent of church and See also:dogma, oratorio once more tends to become See also:con-fused with Biblical opera. The singular fragrance and tenderness of the best parts of See also:Berlioz's little masterpiece L'Enfance du Christ (put together from sections composed between 1847 and 1854) give it high artistic value; but if " oratorio " means " sacred music " Berlioz was incapable of anything of the sort; for the See also:Christianity of his Grande Messe des morts and his Te Deum is the Christianity of See also:Napoleon; and, if oratorio means a consistent treatment of a See also:legend or subject in terms of musical epic, Berlioz can never See also:fix his attention long enough to remember how he began by the time he has got half way through. Though Berlioz's See also:essay in oratorio is not quite so irresponsible a vocalsymphonic-dramatic medley as his Romeo et Juliette and Damnation de See also:Faust, it unmistakably marks a transition towards the See also:complete secularizing of the Bible for musical purposes. But the long-continued See also:prejudice in England against the See also:representation of religious subjects on the stage has wrought peculiar confusion in the theory of their romantic treatment in music. It may be noted as a curiosity that See also:Saint-Saens's Biblical opera, See also:Samson et Dalila (written in 1877), after being known in England for many quiet years as an oratorio, suddenly, in 1910, was permitted by the See also:censor of plays, under royal command, to be produced at Covent Garden for what it was intended. It may
1 Schubert's well-known cantata, Miriam's Siegesgesang, has been discussed as a small oratorio; but it is of slight artistic and no historic importance.
even be suggested that this occurred just early enough to prevent See also:Strauss's See also:Salome from being regarded by the See also:British public as an oratorio.
The See also:earnest efforts of Cesar See also:Franck prevented See also:French oratorio from drifting entirely towards the stage; and meanwhile See also:year by year See also:Brahms's Deutsches See also:Requiem (completed, except for one movement, in 1868) towers ever higher above all choral music since Beethoven's Mass in D, and draws us away from the semi-dramatic oratorio towards the musically perfectible form of an enlarged cantata in which a See also:group of choral movements is concentrated on a set of religious ideas differing from liturgical forms only in free choice of text. Within the essentially non-theatrical limitations of dramatic or epic oratorio, we may See also:note the spirited new departures of Sir See also: Freedom from the restrictions of the stage also means absence of the resources of the stage, so that Wagnerian Leitmotif is no sufficient substitute for formal musical coherence when the audience has no See also:action before its eyes. Accordingly these leaders of the English musical renascence are by no means exclusively Wagnerian in their oratorios. A fine and typical example of their peculiar non-theatrical resources may be seen in the end of King Saul, where Parry (who, like Wagner, is his own librettist) makes the See also:Witch of See also:Endor foresee the See also:battle of Gilboa, and allows her See also:tale to become real in the telling: so that it is followed immediately by the final See also:dirge. (D. F. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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