Haydn and Mendelssohn
Decadence of oratorio after Handel and Bach--Haydn and
"The Creation"--Development of descriptive orchestration
in oratorio--Haydn's oratorios descriptive and
contemplative--Mendelssohn and the fusion of styles--His
dramatic German Protestant oratorios--Mingling of elements from
Handel and Bach.
For a considerable period after the deaths of Handel and Bach nothing of
note in oratorio form was produced. One must seek for the cause of this
in the vitiated state of public taste. Europe was addicted to the
Italian opera habit, and in those days Italian opera was quite as empty,
meaningless, and insincere as it has been at most periods in its
history. There were no Italian composers who had sufficient genius to
combine dramatic truth with musical beauty, so those who were writing
contented themselves with the easily attainable, and turned out watery
arias to please the superficial multitude. It was much easier for people
to listen to that sort of music than to the imposing works of Handel or
the subtle productions of Bach. Indeed the work of the latter was not
known far outside of his own country. The large and comprehensive
"History of Music," by Sir John Hawkins, published in 1776, when England
was not yet through mourning the loss of Handel, contains a very brief
mention of Bach, and says nothing at all about his Passions. They indeed
were quite forgotten till Mendelssohn found that according to St.
Matthew and resurrected it a hundred years after it was written. In the
meantime Sacchini, Paisiello, Jomelli, and other Italian opera
composers, whose works are now as dead as the Pharaohs, were writing
worthless oratorios in operatic style.
Josef Haydn (1732-1813) began his career as an oratorio composer by
writing an Italian work, in 1774, called "Il ritorno di Tobia." It was
in the accepted form of its time, and though it contained some melodious
solo parts and some well made fugal choruses, it shared the fate of
other oratorios in the same style and sank into oblivion. Before Haydn
reached the closing years of his life, however, two influences combined
to change the public attitude toward operatic and oratorio music. Gluck
had made a determined stand against the meaningless jingle of Italian
opera music and had shown how to write operas which should be simple,
melodious, and dramatically honest. Mozart had taken the entire extant
apparatus of Italian opera and shown how it could be made the vehicle of
the fullest dramatic expression and the most faithful characterization.
The people in general were led to revolt against the employment of the
unsuitable style of the old-fashioned opera in church music, of which
they felt oratorio was a close connection. They saw that if Italian
opera music was unfit for the stage, it was certainly less suited to a
form closely allied to worship.
Meanwhile Haydn had been in London and had heard some of Handel's
oratorios. The knowledge gained therefrom he was now to put to good use
in constructing the choruses of his new works. His own developments in
orchestration had been supplemented by Mozart's revelation of the wide
possibilities of tone-coloring, and Haydn, equipped with all this
knowledge, was to make a most important contribution to the growth of
oratorio in its orchestral department. In the latter days of his great
career, in 1798, Haydn produced "The Creation," a work which has
survived its worthless predecessors of the post-Handelian period, and
which is welcomed to-day wherever music lovers have not lost their
ability to appreciate simplicity and unpretentious beauty. In form "The
Creation" is much more closely allied to the epic form of "The Messiah"
than the dramatic shape of "Samson" and other works. The solo parts of
"The Creation" are assigned to persons in the drama, as Adam and Eve,
but these persons have no dramatic character or function. Their voices
are employed only as those of narrators or commentators. They narrate
the events of creation and comment on its wonders. The reader will at
once see that this method deprived the work of the powerful element of
personal characterization. The emotions of Adam and Eve never come to
the surface. There is no passion, no grief in "The Creation." Thus it
makes a step backward toward the music of pure religious contemplation,
such as we found at the close of the era of church counterpoint. But
Haydn's means were more modern. His arias for the solo voices have all
the beauty of melody and style to be found in the best Italian writing
for the stage, while they add to these elements a sincerity never
wanting in the music of Haydn.
The choruses are naturally designed on a less imposing scale than those
of Handel, which, as we have seen, had a certain dramatic quality. The
general style and purpose of Haydn's oratorio writing made it inevitable
that his choruses should be more contemplative or descriptive and less
dramatic, and his development of the instrumental accompaniment
emphasized this condition. It was Haydn who introduced into the oratorio
purely descriptive orchestral music, and in doing this he paved the way
for later composers to make stronger dramatic effects. Descriptive music
in the orchestra, and instrumental accompaniments with special
significance, are now a familiar part of the apparatus of the lyric
drama as well as of the oratorio. Haydn employed these means as a part
of his general scheme of descriptive writing. In order to give his
instrumental description full scope, he was obliged to cast his choruses
in a simpler mould than those of Handel, but his contributions to the
art of descriptive writing were quite as valuable within their field as
Handel's to the art of building huge choral climaxes. The prelude to
"The Creation" is an instrumental representation of chaos; in the
recitative beginning "And God made the firmament" are instrumental
illustrations of storms, winds, thunders, and floods; the air "Rolling
in foaming billows" has an accompaniment designed to suggest to the
hearer the movement of waves. These were Haydn's original devices, and
as such, although they sound simple and even naive to us to-day, they
claim an important place in the advancement of musical art.
Haydn's second oratorio, "The Seasons," was produced in 1801, and
although the composer's powers failed rapidly thereafter, there is no
evidence of weakness in this work. In all essentials the form and style
of this oratorio, which is secular, being founded in Thomson's poem of
the same name, are the same as those of "The Creation." It is a
descriptive, contemplative work, and must please by its thoughtful
beauty and illustrative power. It is without the dramatic element.
Ludwig Spohr (1784-1859) wrote oratorios, one of which, called "The Last
Judgment"--though its name literally means "The Last Things" has some
claims to consideration, inasmuch as by reason of its purely
contemplative method and its instrumental descriptions it stands in the
direct line of oratorio progress. It is, however, not frequently
performed. It was produced at Cassel in 1826.
We come now to the master who established a new form of oratorio,--a
form which is unsurpassed in its possibilities, and in which he left us
the greatest masterpiece of dramatic oratorio. Felix Mendelssohn
(1809-1847) wrote two oratorios: "St. Paul," produced in 1836, and
"Elijah," first performed in 1846. Though Mendelssohn was never a writer
for the stage, for which his style was not at all suitable, he was not
undramatic in his musical instincts. He was inordinately fond of
programme music, and was somewhat more inclined to attribute to music a
definite directness of utterance than most thoughtful commentators are
willing to concede to it. He certainly went far toward justifying his
theories by his "Midsummer Night's Dream" overture, but one must be
careful to note that this composition is almost wholly made up of what
has happily been called scenic music,--music descriptive of the
externals of a drama, not of its subtler emotions. That Mendelssohn,
however, had on the whole the right conception of the expressive power
of music is shown by his reproof of the man who tried to give titles to
the "Songs Without Words," and by his quotation of the opening measures
of his own Hebrides overture as his attempt to express his own feelings
aroused by the winds and waves. On the whole, it must be conceded that
Mendelssohn had a correct idea of the dramatic expressiveness of music
and a deep sympathy with it.
At the same time Mendelssohn, though of Jewish blood, was intensely
German. Furthermore, he was baptized and brought up as a Protestant
Christian. It is not at all surprising, then, that he was prepared to be
powerfully attracted toward the Protestant oratorio, when he approached
that form of composition, and to show little sympathy for the Italian
form, as perfected by Handel. As early as 1823 the score of Bach's "St.
Matthew Passion" was copied from the manuscript and placed in his hands
for study. It is not difficult to imagine the effect of the work on the
mind of an eager, ambitious boy of fourteen, already a composer, and
just passed through the severe process of German preparation for
confirmation. Mendelssohn became an enthusiastic propagandist of the
teachings of Bach, and revived the "St. Matthew Passion" in Germany,
where the general public had quite forgotten it.
In preparing himself for the task of composing his first oratorio, "St.
Paul," Mendelssohn undoubtedly gave close study to the works of his
great predecessors. That he should have rejected almost instinctively
the Italian style of Handel followed as a matter of course. That he
should have put aside with equal readiness the austere style of Bach was
inevitable. Mendelssohn was from the outset an exponent of graceful,
fluent melody. His genius was deeply tinged with the sentiment of song,
and he could no more have sacrificed beauty of theme and perfect
simplicity of form to subtlety of detail than Handel could. But at the
same time his dramatic instincts told him that the sure way to the
hearts of the people was the old Italian way, which made the oratorio in
all essentials, except scenery and action, a religious drama. He knew at
once that Bach's method of presenting the speeches of the principal
personages in direct recitative was good, but that it had fallen short
of complete effectiveness from two reasons: first, because the speeches
were led up to and quoted by the evangelist narrator; and second,
because the musical character of the recitative was too detailed to
appeal to a general audience. But Mendelssohn saw one tremendous factor
in the Bach oratorio,--the chorale as an embodiment of the Protestant
faith of Germany.
In his "St. Paul" he did not arrive at the true method of dealing with
the elements which appeared to him to be essential to an influential and
permanent form of oratorio. The book is episodic and lacks dramatic
continuity. The plan is religious rather than dramatic. The martyrdom of
St. Stephen is the first episode, and it is without direct connection
dramatically with the other two, the conversion of St. Paul, and his
later career as a preacher. Both Stephen and Paul are deficient in
definiteness of characterization. They appear to us rather as
representations of an idea, which may be expressed in the words, "Go ye
unto all the world and preach the gospel." But in "Elijah" we have the
genuine modern dramatic oratorio, and in it we find that Mendelssohn
made use of those parts of the apparatus of his predecessors suitable to
his designs. "Elijah" is eclectic. It is a fusion of forms and styles,
made with great skill and with the finest possible discrimination. It is
a logical evolution, and Mendelssohn showed in its composition an
instinctive grasp of the evolutionary principle of the survival of the
fittest,--that is, the fittest for his design.
He dispensed with the narrator and directed his attention to placing the
speeches of his personages before the auditor in the most direct,
dramatic, and characteristic manner. He used the choruses as Handel did,
to impersonate the mass of people. He employed the chorales exactly as
Bach did, to signify the thought of the Church as it had come to be
understood in Germany. His scenes are all arranged in dramatic form, and
without doubt could be placed upon the stage effectively if the whole
feeling of contemporaneous audiences were not opposed to that method of
giving oratorio. His characters are drawn clearly and sharply. Indeed,
there is no oratorio in which the musical characterization is so finely
worked out. The contrasts between the choruses of the priests of Baal
and the Jews are sufficient evidence of this. But everywhere throughout
the score there is evidence of a consistent and successful effort to
adapt to the production of a powerfully dramatic, yet specifically
Protestant and German, oratorio, the most influential elements of the
forms of Handel and Bach, together with Haydn's instrumental coloring.
The very beginning of the oratorio strikes a new note, and one of
tremendous dramatic power. Three broad chords are followed by the
portentous prophecy of Elijah, "As God the Lord of Israel liveth, before
whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according
to my word." After that single passage, set to a style of recitative
wholly different from that of either Bach or Handel, yet containing some
of the qualities of both, follows the overture, a piece of music
descriptive of the misery of the land of drought. Thenceforward
everything moves dramatically. The people cry, "Help, Lord; wilt Thou
quite destroy us?" Then they beseech, "Lord, bow Thine ear to our
prayer." Obadiah calls them to repentance with warning and with the
lovely air, "If with all your hearts ye truly seek me." Later an angel
comes and commands Elijah to go to Cherith's brook, and then follows the
double quartet, "For He shall give His angels," a new employment of
Bach's commentary chorus. The episode of Elijah and the widow is treated
with dramatic directness, and is followed by the commentary chorus,
"Blessed are the men who fear Him."
The whole scene between Elijah and the priests of Baal is magnificent in
the eloquence of its dramatic form and style. Yet the superb air of
Elijah, "Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, this day let it be known
that Thou art God," is followed by the pure old Bach species of chorale,
"Cast thy burden upon the Lord." The climax of the oratorio is reached
in the great scene of the coming of the rain. This scene is constructed
and composed with a fine sense of dramatic values, and its effect is so
sure and strong that it puts before the imagination a vivid picture. It
is no wonder that in England, where dry and dusty works are produced
year after year by native composers, such a masterpiece as "Elijah" is
always heard with unabated enthusiasm. Here it is overshadowed in the
popular mind by "The Messiah," and perhaps this is due in some measure
to the public absorption in opera.
Since Mendelssohn achieved his fusion of the most influential elements
of the Italian and German oratorios, no significant advance has been
made in the oratorio form. This, of course, is due to the fact that no
musician of genius has found in that form a vehicle suitable to the
character of his thought. Good, workmanlike compositions have been
produced in England, where oratorio is more popular than it is in any
other part of the world, but so far as can be judged from the
disadvantageous position of close proximity to the novelties, nothing of
large worth has been written there. It seems safe to say, however, that
the greatest choral composition written since Mendelssohn's day is the
German Requiem of Brahms. But it lies outside the field of oratorio.
Edgar Tinel, born at Sinay, Belgium, on March 27, 1854, has made an
attempt to return directly to the Italian dramatic form of Carissimi,
but employing modern musical material. His oratorio, "St. Franciscus,"
produced in Brussels in 1888, employs the entire musical apparatus of
modern German opera, including the full resources of Wagnerian
orchestration. The result is that the music smells of the theatre, and
the whole style of the work is foreign to the religious atmosphere of
the oratorio. Charles François Gounod (1818-1893), the famous French
opera composer, made an attempt in his "Redemption" to produce a
modernized treatment of Bach's passion form. Gounod was always a student
of Bach, and was thoroughly acquainted with the various forms employed
by that master. In "The Redemption" he followed the Bach plan of giving
the narrative to one or two separate male voices and having the direct
speeches of Jesus quoted by a baritone. He employs the chorale to
represent the voice of the Church, while modern chorus forms are used to
represent the crowd. Gounod also uses a single typical theme to embody
the love of Jesus, and this, of course, is a device of later date than
Bach. But the ground plan of "The Redemption" is plainly modelled on
that of the "St. Matthew Passion." There the resemblance ends, for
Gounod's recitative and choral writings are modern and sweetly melodious
without subtlety.