About the middle of the sixteenth century, San Filippo Neri, a zealous
Florentine priest, opened the chapel, or oratory, of his church in Rome,
for popular hours with his congregation. His main object being "to
allure young people to pious offices and to detain them from worldly
pleasure," he endeavored to make the occasions attractive as well as
edifying, and supplemented religious discourse and spiritual songs with
dramatized versions of Biblical stories provided with suitable music.
Associated with him in his labors for a good cause, was no less a
composer than that great reformer of Catholic church music, Giovanni
Pierluigi Sante da Palestrina, whose harmonies were declared by a
music-loving Pope to be those of the celestial Jerusalem. The laudable
enterprise proved successful. People flocked from all quarters to enjoy
the gratuitous entertainments, and a form of sacred musical art resulted
that derived from them its name.
Roswitha, a nun of the Gandersheim cloister, in the tenth century, made
the earliest attempt recorded to invest church plays with artistic
worth. Her six religious dramas, written in Latin for the use and
edification of her sister nuns, were published in a French setting, in
1845. It was a woman, too, Laura Guidiccioni, a brilliant member of the
Florence group of aristocratic truth-seekers in art, who wrote the text
of the first religious musical dramatic composition to which the name
oratorio became attached. It was set to music of a declamatory style by
Emilio del Cavalieri, the author's collaborator in the pastoral plays
that were really embryo operas. The title of the piece, "The
Representation of the Body and the Soul," indicates the allegorical
nature of the subject.
Its initial performance occurred at Rome, February, 1600, in the oratory
of San Filippo's church, Santa Maria della Vallicella. The composer had
died some months earlier, but his minute stage directions were
accurately observed. Behind the scenes was placed an orchestra
comprising a double lyre, a harpsichord, a large guitar and two flutes,
to which was added a violin for the leading part in the ritornels, that
is, instrumental preludes and interludes. The chorus had seats assigned
on the stage, but rose to sing, employing suitable movements and
gestures. Time, Morality, Pleasure, and other solo characters bore in
their hands musical instruments and seemed to play as they acted and
declaimed their parts, while the playing actually came from the
concealed instruments. The World, the Body and Human Life illustrated
the transitoriness of earthly affairs by flinging away the gorgeous
decorations they had worn when they appeared on the stage, and
displaying their utter poverty and wretchedness in the face of death
and dissolution. The representation ended with a ballet, danced
"sedately and reverently" to music by the chorus.
Some idea of the oratorio in its infancy may be gained from this
description. Except that the subject had a religious bearing, it
differed little from the opera. With Giacomo Carissimi, director of
music at San Apollinare, Rome, from 1628 until his death, in 1674, the
paths of the two diverged. He laid down lines that have been followed in
the oratorio ever since. Dancing and acting were excluded by him, and
the rôle of narrator introduced. His broad, simple treatment of chords
enhanced the purity and beauty of everything he wrote, and in his hand
recitative gained character, grace and musical expressiveness. Only a
small portion of his epoch-making work has been preserved, but quite
enough to make clear his title "Father of Oratorio and Cantata."
His pupil, Alessandro Scarlatti, founder of the Neapolitan school and
practically the musical dictator of Naples, from 1694 to 1725, was an
incredibly prolific composer in almost every known species of musical
form. His many improvements in vocal and instrumental music operated
greatly to the advantage of the oratorio. Possessing feeling for
orchestration to an unusual degree for his time, he grouped musical
instruments of different timbres with marked boldness and skill, and was
the first specially to orchestrate recitative. His genius and knowledge
enabled him to restore counterpoint to its rightful place, and his
oratorios show great gain in elasticity and form.
Another Alessandro, he who bore the surname Stradella and was the hero
of Flotow's opera of that name, has figured so freely in romance that it
is not easy to separate truth from fiction in accounts of his life. Dr.
Parry says of him that he had a remarkable instinct for choral effects,
even piling progressions into a climax, that his solo music aims at
definiteness of structure, that, in 1676, he used a double orchestra
whose principal instruments were violins, and that his oratorios were
specially significant, as he cultivated all the resources of that form
of art. His most celebrated composition is an oratorio, "San Giovanni
Battista," and one of the airs attached to it "Pietà Signore," a
beautiful, symmetrical, heart-searching melody, is sung to-day, although
it is by no means as well known as it deserves.
According to tradition, its tender, worshipful strains sung in the
church of the Holy Apostles, at Rome, by the composer himself, once
stayed the hand of an assassin whom jealousy had prompted to slay the
"Apollo della Musica." So Alessandro Stradella was called, because of
his great gifts as singer and composer, and his manly beauty. A jubilant
multitude surrounded him in life, and loud lamentation arose, when, at
length, he fell a victim to envy and malice. Thus the graceful legend
runs. Recent writers are trying to make us believe that the famous
"Pietà Signore" was a later interpolation in "San Giovanni Battista,"
and that it may be attributed to this or that composer, a century or
more after the death of Stradella, in 1681. Unless absolute proof be
afforded us, let us forbear from plucking this gem from his crown.
Composer of fifty operas and many other works, magnificent organist and
harpsichordist, with musical genius of a Titanic order, intellect that
was swift, sure and keen, an indomitable will, a lofty philosophy, and a
lordly personality, George Friedrich Handel, seemingly defeated by
outrageous fortune, wheeled about like some invincible general whose
business it was to win the battle and entering the field of the oratorio
gained a colossal victory. He had for some time passed the half century
milestone of his life when he scored his greatest achievements in this
line, and with magic touch transformed existing materials into the
art-form we know to-day. His "Messiah," which alone would have sufficed
to immortalize him, was produced, in one of his herculean bursts of
power, within twenty-three days, when he was well-advanced in his
fifty-seventh year. It was first given to the public, in Dublin, April
13, 1742, seven months after its completion. The enthusiasm it awakened
was repeated when it was performed later in London. Here, indeed, the
audience became so transported that at the opening of the Hallelujah
chorus every one present, led by the king, rose and remained standing, a
custom we follow to-day.
Herder calls the "Messiah" a Christian epopee, in musical sounds. It is
certainly written in the large, grand style of a noble epic, for it had
large matters to express, and its composer regarded music as a means of
addressing heart and soul. The theme is treated with reverence, delicacy
and judgment, and the leading tone is that of a mighty hymn of
rejoicing. Following an overture that is in itself a revelation, the
opening tenor recitative, "Comfort Ye, My People," has a convincing ring
that all is and will be well, mingled with infinite tenderness, and the
succeeding aria, "Every Valley," is pervaded with the freshness of earth
newly arisen amid great glory. The heart-rending desolation of
selections like the contralto air, "He was Despised," only serves to
accentuate the triumph of other portions. Throughout there is a warmth,
a contrapuntal splendor, a breadth, an elasticity, a richness of
orchestration, unknown in previous oratorio, unless in parts of some of
the master's own works. Even in the duet and choruses remodeled from his
chamber duets, there is that jubilant character that makes them blend
perfectly with the great whole.
Born and educated on German soil, steeped during his wanderer's years in
the spirit of the Italian muse, and finally nourished on the cathedral
music of England, Handel became thoroughly cosmopolitan, appropriating
what he chose from the influences that surrounded him. The English
regard him as one of their national glories, call him the "Saxon
Goliath," the "Michael Angelo of music," a "Bold Briareus with a hundred
hands," and have carved his form in enduring marble above his tomb in
Westminster Abbey. Nothing they have said can equal the tribute paid him
by the dying giant Beethoven, who pointing to Handel's works exclaimed:
"There is the truth."
Another lofty, yet wholly different personality, born also in 1685, is
found in Johann Sebastian Bach, whose Passion Oratorios, a direct
outgrowth of the Passion plays of old, furnish materials and inspiration
for all time. Handel worked in and for the public and fought his battles
in the great world. Bach was the lonely scholar who lived apart from
outside turmoil and unabashed in the presence of earthly monarchs,
reigned supreme in the tone-world. A typical Teuton, his music,
intensely earnest, highly intellectual, contains the essence of
Teutonism, and gives full, rich, copious expression to the inmost being
of humanity. The spirit of Protestant Germany is embodied in his
religious tone productions which have proved to Protestantism a tower of
strength. His service in developing the choral alone is inestimable.
Nothing that he has written, better represents the majesty and sublimity
of his style than his "Saint Matthew Passion" with its surpassing
utterances of human sorrow and infinite tenderness.
In the year 1790, when Joseph Haydn had accepted an invitation to make
a professional visit to London, his young friend, Mozart, endeavored to
dissuade him from going on account of his age, but Haydn persisted,
declaring that he was still active and strong. Eight years later, at
sixty-six years of age, he wrote his celebrated oratorio "The Creation,"
with all the vigor and sparkle of youth. The rambles of years in the
beautiful grounds of Esterhazy had attuned his soul to communion with
nature, and this work plainly shows his power of putting into tones the
secrets nature revealed to him. Blissful joyousness and child-like
naïveté are among its characteristic features.
The style of Beethoven as a composer of sacred music is reflected in his
single oratorio "Christ on the Mount of Olives," that like his single
opera stands apart, amply sufficient to prove what he was capable of
accomplishing. Mendelssohn, in his "St. Paul" and his "Elijah," embodied
a high ideal, building on his predecessors and attaining, especially in
the latter, an eclectic spirit that manifests keen discrimination. The
oratorios of Liszt, the "Christus," "St. Elizabeth" and some lesser
works, reveal high purpose and original treatment of a revelation in
tones of sacred events. In the oratorios of the Frenchman Gounod,
preeminently in his "Redemption," it is interesting to find modern
chorals based on those of the German Bach, and, in fact, as it has been
aptly said, a modernized treatment of Bach's passion form.
What may be the next step in the evolution of the oratorio it were
difficult to estimate. Whether modern efforts can ever surpass, or even
equal, the sublime productions in this field, or whether creative genius
will be turned into wholly new channels, the future alone may
determine.
[Illustration: SAINT-SAËNS]