ORATORIO (MUSIC). — The oratorio is distinguished from theatrical production by being absolutely devoid of stage assistance and any external means intended to be visible; it is distinguished also from the cantata by its greater amplitude, a larger number of characters, and therefore a greater number of recitatives and arias performed by them, as well as by the dramatic action that accompanies the unfolding of an event, sustained by the dialogue among the various parts. The oratorio is therefore entrusted exclusively to hearing, which must receive the impressions of the actions taking place and of the sentiments that succeed one another in the souls of the protagonists in this invisible drama: in the first phase of its history, both actions and sentiments were echoed by an anonymous figure, a character without a face, or, in an abstract sense, a “voice” that narrated the background or commented on the events as they unfolded.
The oratorio is, therefore, the spiritual form par excellence, which developed in depth and height a subject always woven with inner meaning, and, free from material trappings, acts upon the mind and heart of the listeners, rendering the audition of edifying tales or dramatic exhortations to goodness, virtue, and faith all the more pure.
I. HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS AND IMMEDIATE ORIGINS. The remote origins of the oratorio are to be sought in the dialogic element found in liturgical, paraliturgical, or even extra-liturgical texts that have enriched religious music over the centuries.
Among the first and most salient biblical scenes whose tightly constructed and incisive dialogue struck the imagination of medieval writers of mystery plays, spiritual dramas, and sacred representations are the happiness and fall of Adam, with the word of God condemning humanity to atone for its sin; then, from the New Testament, the visit of the Angel to the Virgin announcing the Incarnation.
But the passages that from the outset took on a most fruitful development were those richest in dramatic pathos, in which the narration, expressed through the dialogue between characters, reached the heights of profound human tragedy and deep spirituality: thus were elaborated the stories of the first Christian martyrs, above all the “Passion” of Christ, drawn from the Gospels and vulgarized according to the spirit of the time, which, through the dialogue between Christ and His judges, contains within itself the most expressive dramatic power. From the evangelical text also derives the voice of the “historian” CARISMI (v.). This subject always held a place of honor throughout the history of the oratorio and enjoyed particular development in German lands and among the musicians (about twenty) who set to music the Metastasian libretto of the “Passion.”
Not by derivation but by affinity of genre, the sacred drama and the sacred representation must be recalled: two examples taken from the many in the rich medieval flowering will give an idea of the profound analogy among the three forms. A spiritual drama from the German religious theater of the early Middle Ages, the Ordo virtutum, with music by St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179), depicts the soul contested between the devil and God: the virtues that wish to save the soul call it with the sweetest and most compassionate names (O felix anima is a surge of joyous effusion that will be found again in Carissimi), while the devil (to whom every form of musical expression is denied), insinuates himself murmuring or shouting amid the noise of chains (the strepitus diaboli), the strongest seductions and the most violent rebellion. It is one of those dramas in which the struggles between Heaven and earth, between Paradise and Hell, Good and Evil, take on substance and artistic form, as, some 450 years later, in 1600, will happen in Rome in the Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo by Emilio de’ Cavalieri. As for the other related form, the sacred representation, it will suffice to cite that of the Passion held for centuries on Good Friday in the Colosseum and which, suspended when (16th century) it degenerated into a noisy public spectacle, continues even today in many cities of the world (Oberammergau, Sezze, etc.). A musical composition closer to the oratorio in that it lacked scenic apparatus was the Cantata performed on Christmas night in the Apostolic Palace, suppressed for having degenerated into worldliness and restored at various times by the popes.
The true historical origin of the oratorio in the vernacular lauda (v.), and in that particular type of lauda that spread in the 16th century in the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, through his impetus and with the valuable contribution of the best musicians of the time; from the various Oratories of St. Philip, the lauda, like later the oratorio, radiated throughout the Catholic world, carrying, on the wings of faith, the life-giving breath of a Christian art. The Oratorian lauda can be divided into three principal phases, which give the music a special character: polyphonic, transitional, and monodic. In the first phase the narrative tone prevails, while in the third, monodic, the dialogic progression prevails. The end and criterion for distinguishing between the two tendencies can be considered Il teatro armonico spirituale by G. Francesco Anerio (1619), where the aria of accompanied monody is already foreshadowed, and the advent of the oratorio is now imminent. Among the artists who followed and strengthened the work of St. Philip must first be mentioned G. Animuccia (v.), G. Anerio (v.), F. Soto (v.), and D. Isorelli (v.). A typical element that spread during the period of the Catholic Reformation, to amend frivolous or even obscene compositions, especially where creative fervor was not especially lively, was the “spiritual disguise,” an expedient widely applied in Florence by Serafino Razzi and in Rome by Anerio. In the period from the mid-16th to the mid-17th century, the word oratorio had three different meanings: 1) the place of assembly where St. Philip and his first disciples gathered a number of devotees, at first small but soon quite large, so as to require the construction of the Borromini building near Santa Maria in Vallicella; 2) the ensemble of devotional exercises, consisting of a sermon preceded and followed by a vernacular lauda (whence the later division of the oratorio into two parts), held in the evenings in these gatherings; 3) the form of the oratorio proper.
The activity of the Oratory of St. Philip was the fertile ground in which the oratorio was born, developed, and spread throughout the world. Among the principal figures that distinguish the formative period of the oratorio is Francesco Balducci, who gave the oratorio its first two completed poetic works (whose music is lost): Il trionfo o l’Incoronazione di Maria Vergine and La Fede, o il Sacrificio di Abramo. With him the formative period of the oratorio closes and the transition from the 17th century to Arcadia begins: the name oratorio, previously used interchangeably with “dialogue,” is now permanently attributed to the fully developed form.
The influence of the theater will later be the principal cause of its decline, when, in the 19th century, the stage will draw the oratorio to itself and hybrid examples of scenic oratorio will appear, threatening to make the oratorio lose its character as a purely auditory and spiritual artistic form.
II. THE ORATORIO IN THE VERNACULAR
In the 17th century, within the sphere—as has been said—of the Oratory of St. Philip, the oratorio in the vernacular developed, which is by far more important than the oratorio in Latin. Among the principal composers of that century are S. Landi (1632), with his Alessio, an example more of religious theater than of oratorio, and D. Mazzocchi, with La querimonia di s. Maria Maddalena (c. 1640). Historians of the oratorio in this period place particular emphasis on the epic element of the oratorio: thus Spagna, Quadrio, and Crescimbeni, while others consider the oratorio a kind of spiritual drama or opera.III. THE LATIN ORATORIO
This type of oratorio, originating from the Latin metrical psalm, arose and developed in the oratory of the Most Holy Crucifix at S. Marcello, opened in 1522, and with it flourished the glorious period of G. Carissimi’s activity ([b. 1605–74], who, with 15 Latin oratorios, among which Jephte, Jonas, Judicium Salomonis, and Extremum judicium stand out, reconnects to the ancient text of Holy Scripture and to the method it employed in presenting events through a special character, the text). The performances held at the Crucifix also had another distinguishing feature: the abundant instrumental accompaniment, which, however, was never excessive in Carissimi, who remained supremely restrained even in coloring the harmonic background of his melodies. The Latin oratorio, after Carissimi’s death, definitively declined following the closure of the Servite oratory of the Most Holy Crucifix, of which it had been the principal and direct emanation (1725).IV. THE ITALIAN ORATORIO OF THE 17TH–18TH CENTURIES
1. The Venetian school, which also arose around 1661 under the aegis of the Oratory of the Filippini at S. Maria della Fava, soon spread beyond Italy and had its most fruitful and aristocratic center in Vienna. Among the librettists are found the two most illustrious names in the history of the oratorio, Apostolo Zeno and Pietro Metastasio; among the composers, A. Lotti, B. Marcello, B. Galuppi, G. Legrenzi, etc.2. The Bolognese school, born around 1615 in the Filippine Oratory of S. Maria di Galliera, connects with the Roman tradition of the oratorio in the vernacular, whereas the Venetian school remained faithful to biblical sources (as at S. Marcello). Among the most eminent Bolognese figures who illuminated the oratorio form are the two Arresti, father and son (Giulio Cesare and Floriano), G. P. Colonna, G. A. Petri, G. Barrocini, P. G. B. Martini, G. B. Bassani, and G. B. Vitali.
3. The Tuscan school, developed under Cosimo III (1670–1723), leaves among others two celebrated names, those of B. Pasquini and F. Gasparini (1668–1727), a pupil of Corelli and Pasquini.
4. The Neapolitan school is the richest in names and works and lasted the longest, spanning roughly a century and a half. It is divided into three periods, each with its own characteristics, outlined and framed within the compositional activity of its leading exponents. In the first period, entirely under the sign of A. Scarlatti, from the oratorio *I dolori di Maria Vergine* (1693) to his death (1725), there is still a vivid trace of the polyphony of the golden Roman tradition, filtered through the monodic vocal style of Carissimi, while fugal counterpoint is combined with a certain search for chromaticism, tending more toward vocal virtuosity than toward the dazzling palette of Venetian pictorial expressivity. The names are immortal: A. Scarlatti, A. Stradella, L. Vinci, G. B. Pergolesi (q.v.), etc. In the second period, which runs from A. Scarlatti’s death to that of N. Jommelli (q.v.), opera, which had already begun its perilous influence in the previous era, here emerges triumphantly, overwhelming with its lyrical fervor the epic and narrative choral character of the oratorio.
The second Neapolitan school also spread abroad, influenced by the court of Vienna, particularly in the literary sphere from which it drew (Zeno and Metastasio), and by various German courts where Italian or Italianizing artists worked (such as Jommelli in Stuttgart, Porpora and Hasse in Dresden and Vienna). Particularly noteworthy from this phase, which may rightly be called the most fruitful and happiest of the entire Neapolitan oratorio, are the oratorios of L. Leo and N. Jommelli (q.v.), all on texts by Metastasio, which contain pages of singular beauty in their lyrical episodes and recitatives, imbued with a profoundly tragic pathos. At this moment, the importance of the poetic text assumes a primary role: it is a true reform of the genre, one that Apostolo Zeno, imperial poet at the court of Vienna where he worked from 1718 to 1728, envisaged, following in the footsteps of Arcangelo Spagna and with his own theories, for a new type of oratorio that would adhere to the Aristotelian unities of time and place advocated by Spagna and would have the characteristics of an opera, albeit one not meant for staging; however, despite the dignity of his literary style, the exactitude of the biblical sources he drew upon, and the elevated tone he gave to the recitation of his characters, his 17 *azioni sacre* (published around 1735), solemn and classical though they may be, lack the living effusion of lyricism found instead in the works of his successor at the Viennese court (from 1730 to 1782), Pietro Metastasio, whose works remain fresh with an intimate sentiment that transcends the limits of time and place to rise to pure, universal artistic expression. Metastasio did not follow Zeno’s reform program but instead imprinted his own powerful personal mark on the movement, distancing himself in part from Spagna’s and Zeno’s premises without abandoning the conventions of eighteenth-century taste. He created an oratorio that, without excessive reformist concerns, is divided into two parts, observes the unities of time and place, and follows a plot akin to that of opera, characterized by melodic lyricism in the felicitous depiction of those affections that are at all times the heritage of the better part of the human soul, exalting goodness and virtue, charity and love.
Among the best composers of the time who set Metastasio’s seven *azioni sacre* to music, the following deserve mention: for *La Passione di N. Signore* (1730): Cadara (1730), Jommelli (1749), Morlacchi, Paisiello (1784), Zingarelli, etc.; for *S. Elena al Calvario* (1731): Caldara (1731), Anfossi, Danesi, Leo, Giordanello; for *Giuseppe riconosciuto* (1733), set to music 26 times; for *La Betulia liberata* (1734), set 24 times: Reutter (1735), Jommelli (1743), Anfossi; for *Gioas re di Giuda* (1735): Reutter; for *Isacco, figura del Redentore*: Jommelli (c. 1752), Cimarosa; for *La morte di Abele* (1732), set to music by 22 composers: Reutter (1732), Leo, Piccinini, Jommelli, etc. In the third period, which runs from Jommelli’s death to that of N. Zingarelli (1837), the oratorio declined, ascending the stages of the most fashionable theaters (especially under Ferdinand IV) as a mere product of fashionable frivolity. The names of composers are many, but few are celebrated: foremost among them is D. Cimarosa (q.v.) with *Absalon* (1787) and *Il sacrificio di Abramo*; N. Piccinini (q.v.) with *Gionata*; Giordanello with *La distruzione di Gerusalemme*, a subject that also attracted the attention of other composers, such as Pacini and Zingarelli (1811), who achieved great success even at the Paris Opera. A notable example of a scenic oratorio is Rossini’s *Mosè in Egitto*, written to a libretto by L. A. Tottola, first as an oratorio in two parts for Lent 1818, then reduced to an opera in four acts (1827), the form in which it is still performed today.
To further the degeneration of the oratorio in the 19th century, there also emerged the *oratorio cantato*, formed by stitching together excerpts from theatrical operas (arias, duets, etc.) with an utterly unhistorical and anti-artistic criterion: of such patchwork oratorios, which have nothing more to do with the oratorio form or with theater, only one example will be cited, as a curiosity of costume history rather than art, since all artistic intent is entirely banished—*S. Filippo Neri... ossia la letizia cristiana*, performed in Rome in 1840, in which, among other things, the saint sings Bellini’s aria *Sovra il sen la man mi pose*. Fortunately, these deplorable outrages against art and religion were soon abandoned.
V. THE GERMAN ORATORIO IN THE 17TH–19TH CENTURIES
In Germany as well, the Filippine houses brought the Italian oratorio, which, along with our melodrama, had a notable influence on German musical art in the 16th–17th centuries. In the German flowering, special note must be taken of the preeminent place accorded to the oratorio by the Passion genre, which, with a great affinity toThe oratorio, under whose influence it developed and flourished, counts among its distinguished practitioners such notable composers as Bach and Handel. Initially, the Passions were modeled faithfully on the authentic text of the Bible: among these are the works of Thomas Selle (1643), Heinrich Schütz, with his *Sieben Worte Jesu Christi am Kreuz* (c. 1645) and the *Historia des Leidens und Sterbens unseres Herrn und Heyland des Jesu Christi* (c. 1665–72), followed by Christian Flor (1667), Johann Sebastian (1662), and J. Theile (1673). Subsequently, paraphrased texts were used, among which Brockes’ proved most popular and was set to music by more than twenty composers (Keiser, Telemann, Handel, Mattheson); until J. S. Bach’s art employed both types of text, using the pure biblical text for the recitatives and modern poetic texts (by Brockes and Picander, for example, in the Passions according to St. John and St. Matthew respectively) for the arias and choruses.
After J. S. Bach, his sons should still be remembered as authors of important Passions, such as Carl Philipp Emanuel, as well as K. H. Graun (*Der Tod Jesu*, 1755), Haydn, with the instrumental quartet later arranged as a vocal work with his own revision: *Sieben Worte am Kreuz* (1785), and others. Regarding the figure of J. S. Bach (v.), in addition to the two great Passions, the *Johannes-Passion* (1723) and *Matthäus-Passion* (1729), the *Weihnachtsoratorium* (1734) should be recalled, consisting of six cantatas to be performed successively from Christmas to Epiphany. Even in the choice of this subject, he had been preceded by Heinrich Schütz, who in 1664 had composed a Christmas oratorio, *Historie der freuden- und gnadenreichen Geburt Gottes und Mariens Sohn Jesu Christi*. A separate consideration is owed to the work of G. F. Handel (v. 1685–1759), who gave his music a distinctly Italian imprint through his stays in Italy and the influence exerted on him by Carissimi via A. Steffani in Hanover. He too left a *Passion according to St. John* (1704) and a *Passion nach Brockes* (1720), but his most celebrated works are the oratorios *Esther*, *Saul*, *Samson*, and, most famous of all, *Messiah*, performed in Dublin in 1742.
In Bach, the oratorio reached its full maturity; in his work, the artistic and technical formation of the oratorio is shaped by the three major exponents of musical composition: the polyphony of the lauda from the mid-16th century is found in the broad scope of his chorales, the monody of the lauda from the late 16th century lives again in the arias, while the narrative lauda echoes in the declamatory narrative of the *historicus*. These three elements merge in him, flowing from the sources of tradition to form a wonderfully harmonious and complete whole of sovereign beauty. After Bach and Handel, German oratorio still boasts three great names, those of the Viennese classical composers, but its expressive power was already in decline, and even between Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, a lesser impetus is evident in the oratorio compared to their other works. For Mozart and Haydn, the Italian influence was still strong enough to drive them to clothe Italian libretti—whose style was thoroughly imbued with the finest Italian vocality—in music. The former elaborated Metastasio’s *Betulia liberata* (1771–72), and the latter *Il ritorno di Tobia*, performed at the Vienna court in 1774–75. Different, however, is *Christus am Ölberg* (Op. 85), written in 1800 and published in 1811 by L. van Beethoven, in which the Italian influence is now diminished beneath the overwhelming, personal impetus of Beethoven’s style. In 1829, Bach’s *St. Matthew Passion* was revived after a century of neglect and performed at the Singakademie in Berlin under Mendelssohn’s direction, to whom musical history owes the composition of two oratorios: *Paulus* (1836) and *Elias* (1846). Romanticism now pervaded the German musical world and contributed to giving the oratorio tones and colors of a melodiousness and passion that increasingly distorted its essence, which must necessarily be sober and serene, even when expressing the most tragic events. Suffice it to cite A. G. Rubinstein (1829–94), who, though Russian, may be considered the last creation of the German Romantic school, to complete, with his *Das verlorene Paradies* (Weimar 1858), the panorama of German oratorio in the 19th century. Belonging instead to a new current, though also a foreigner, is Franz Liszt, who with *The Legend of St. Elizabeth* (1862) and *Christus* (1866) established in Germany a new school that propelled a modern restoration of the oratorio with a return to the pure sources of the Roman classical tradition of Palestrina and Carissimi.
VI. The Oratorio in Europe and America