Oratorio (Music)

ORATORY (MUSIC). - The oratorio is distinguished from theatrical production by being absolutely devoid of the aid of scenery and of any visible expressive means; it is likewise distinguished from the cantata by a greater breadth, a greater number of characters and therefore of recitatives and arias performed by them, and by the dramatic action, which accompanies the unfolding of an event, sustained by the dialogue of the various parts among themselves. The oratorio is therefore entrusted exclusively to hearing, which must receive the impressions of the actions that unfold and of the sentiments that succeed one another in the souls of the protagonists in this invisible drama: of both, actions and sentiments, there was an echo, in the first phase of its history, in an anonymous figure, a character without a face, even, in an abstract sense, a "voice" that narrated the antecedent events or commented on the events that were taking place.

The oratorio, therefore, is the spiritual form par excellence, which developed in depth and in height a subject always interwoven with inner meaning and, free from material trappings, acts upon the mind and the heart of the listeners, rendering purer the hearing of edifying tales or of dramatic exhortations to the good, to virtue, to faith.

I. HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS AND IMMEDIATE ORIGINS

The remote origins of the oratorio must be sought in the dialogic element, to be found in the liturgical, paraliturgical or even extra-liturgical texts that have enriched religious music over the centuries.

Among the first and most striking biblical scenes, whose close-knit and incisive dialogue struck the imagination of medieval writers of mysteries, 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 Angel's visit to the Virgin announcing the Incarnation.

But the passages that from the very beginning took on a highly fruitful development were those richest in dramatic pathos, in which the narrative, expressed through the dialogue among the characters, touched heights of lofty human tragedy and profound spirituality: thus were elaborated the stories of the first Christian martyrs, above all the "Passion" of Christ, drawn from the Gospels and rendered in the vernacular according to the spirit of the time, which, with the dialogue between Christ and his judges, contains within itself the most expressive dramatic power. From the Gospel text also derives the voice of the "historian" that is found in the work of Carissimi (v.). This subject held a place of honor at every period throughout the history of the oratorio and had a particular development in the German 18th century and among the musicians (some twenty) who set to music Metastasio's libretto of the "Passion."

Not by derivation, but by affinity of genre, mention must be made of the sacred drama and the sacred representation: two examples taken from among the very many of the rich medieval flowering will give an idea of the profound analogy among the three forms. A spiritual drama of 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 by the sweetest and most merciful names (O felix anima is an outburst of joyful effusion that will be found again in Carissimi), while the devil (to whom every form of musical expression is precluded) insinuates, 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 consistency and artistic form, as, about 450 years later, in 1600, would happen in Rome in the Rappresentazione di Anima e di Corpo by Emilio de' Cavalieri. As regards the other related form, the sacred representation, it will suffice to cite that of the Passion which was held for centuries on Good Friday at the Colosseum and which, suspended when (16th century) it degenerated into a noisy street 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 on various occasions by the popes.

The true historical origin of the oratorio in the vernacular must be sought in the lauda (v.), and in that particular type of lauda that spread in the 16th century in the Filippine oratory, through the impulse of St. Philip Neri and with the valuable contribution of the best musicians of the time; from the various Filippine houses the lauda, like the oratorio later, radiated throughout the Catholic world, bearing, on the wings of faith, the life-giving breath of a Christian art. The Filippine lauda can be divided into three main phases, which give music a special character: polyphonic, transitional, monodic. In the first phase the narrative tone prevails, while in the third, monodic, the dialogic manner prevails. As a boundary and criterion of discrimination between the two tendencies may be considered Il teatro armonico spirituale by G. Francesco Anerio (1619), where the aria of accompanied monody already takes shape and in which the advent of the oratorio is already present, no longer far off. Among the artists who followed and corroborated the work of St. Philip, mention must be made first of all of G. Animuccia (v.), G. Ancina (v.), F. Staro (v.), D. Isorelli (v.). A typical element that spread in the era of the Catholic Reformation, in order to emend frivolous or even obscene compositions, especially where creative fervor was not too lively, was the "spiritual disguise," an expedient widely applied in Florence by Serafino Razzi, in Rome by Ancina. In the period from the mid-16th century to the mid-17th century, the word oratorio had three different meanings: 1) the meeting place where St. Philip and his first disciples entertained a number of devotees, at first small, but soon so numerous as to require the construction of the Borrominian building near S. Maria in Vallicella; 2) the set of devotional exercises, consisting of a sermon, preceded and followed by a lauda in the vernacular (whence later the division of the oratorio into two parts), which were held in the evening at these gatherings; 3) the form properly so called.

The Filippine activity 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 poetic works complete in themselves (whose music is lost). Il trionfo o l'Incoronazione di Maria Vergine and La Fede, o il Sacrificio di Abramo: with him the period of formation of the oratorio closes and the transition is made from seventeenth-century mannerism to Arcadia: the name oratorio, which previously was used alternately with that of "dialogue," is now attributed stably to the fully developed form.

The influence of the theater would later be the principal cause of its decadence, when, in the 19th century, the stage attracted the oratorio to itself and there arose the hybrid exercises of scenic oratorio, which threatened 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 there developed, within the circle, as has been said, of the Filippine Oratory, the oratorio in the vernacular, which is by far more important than the oratorio in Latin. Among the principal composers of that century mention should be made of S. Landi (1632), with his Alessio, an example, more than anything else, of religious theater, and D. Mazzocchi, with La querimonia di s. Maria Maddalena (ca. 1640). The historians of the oratorio in this period all place particular emphasis on the epic element of the oratorio: thus Spagna, the 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 motet, arose and developed in the oratory of the Most Holy Crucifix at S. Marcello, opened in 1522, and with it lived through the glorious era of the activity of G. Carissimi ([v.] 1605-74), who with 15 Latin oratorios, among which Jephte, Jonas, Judicium Salomonis and Extremum Judicium stand out, linked back to the ancient text of Holy Scripture and to the procedure it follows in presenting events by means of a special character, the « testo ». The performances held at the Crucifix also had another characteristic that distinguished them: the copious instrumental accompaniment, which, however, was never excessive in Carissimi, always extremely sober even in coloring the harmonic background of his melodies. The Latin oratorio declined definitively after the death of Carissimi, following the closure of the Servite cenacle of the Most Holy Crucifix, of which it was the principal and direct emanation (1725).

IV. THE ITALIAN ORATORIO OF THE 17TH-18TH CENTURIES

1. The Venetian school, which likewise arose around 1661 under the auspices of the Filippine Congregation at S. Maria della Fava, soon spread beyond Italy and had its most fertile 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 musicians, A. Lotti, B. Marcello, B. Galuppi, G. Legrenzi, etc.

2. The Bolognese school, born around 1615 in the Filippine oratorio of S. Maria di Galliera, links up with the Roman tradition of the oratorio in the vernacular, while the Venetian school remained faithful to biblical sources (as at S. Marcello). Among the most eminent Bolognese who distinguished the oratorio form, mention should be made of the two Arrestis, father and son (Giulio Cesare and Floriano), G. P. Colonna, G. A. Perti, G. Barrocini, Fr. G. B. Martini, G. B. Bassani, G. B. Vitali.

3. The Tuscan school, which developed under Cosimo III (1670-1723), leaves among others two famous 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 in time, embracing a period of about a century and a half. It is divided into epochs, each with its own distinct characteristics, delineated and framed within the compositional activity of its major exponents. In the first epoch, 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 joined to a certain search for chromaticism, tending more toward vocal virtuosity than toward the dazzling palette of Venetian pictorial expressiveness. The names are immortal: A. Scarlatti, A. Stradella, L. Vinci, G. B. Pergolesi (v.), etc. In the second epoch, which runs from the death of A. Scarlatti to the death of N. Jommelli (v.), melodrama, which had already begun its dangerous influence in the preceding epoch, bursts forth here, sweeping away with its lyrical impetus the epic and narrative choral quality of the oratorio.

The second Neapolitan school also spread abroad, coming under the influence of the court of Vienna, especially as regards the literary side from which it drew (Zeno and Metastasio), and of various German courts in which Italian or Italianizing artists worked (such as Jommelli at Stuttgart, Porpora and Hasse at Dresden and Vienna). Particular mention should be made, in this phase, which may rightly be defined as the most fertile and the happiest of all Neapolitan oratorio, of the oratorios of L. Leo and of N. Jommelli (v.), all on texts by Metastasio, which contain pages of singular beauty in the lyrical episodes and in the recitative, which succeeds in imbuing them with a profoundly tragic pathos. The importance of the poetic text assumes at this moment a leading role: it is a genuine reform of the genre, that which Apostolo Zeno, poet laureate of the court of Vienna where he carried out his activity from 1718 to 1728, proposed to himself, yearning, in the footsteps of Arcangelo Spagna and with his own theories, for a new type of oratorio that would be faithful to the Aristotelian unity of time and place championed by Spagna and that would have the characteristics of an opera, albeit one not intended for performance; yet, despite the dignity of his literary style, the exactness of the biblical sources from which he drew, the elevated tone that he confers upon the recitation of his characters, there is not to be found in his 17 azioni sacre (published around 1735), solemn and classical but conventional and cold, that living effusion of lyricism with which the work of his successor at the Viennese court (from 1730 to 1782), Pietro Metastasio, is instead rich, ever fresh with an intimate sentiment that transcends the limits of setting and time to rise to pure, universal artistic expression. Metastasio does not follow the reform program proposed by Zeno, but gives the movement a powerful personal imprint, whereby, departing in part from the premises of Spagna and Zeno, yet not leaving the frameworks of eighteenth-century taste, he realizes an oratorio that, without excessive preoccupations with reform, has a division into two parts, observes the unity of time and place and follows a melodramatic plot, but has the distinctive character of lyrical melodiousness, in the happy depiction of those affections that are in every age the heritage of the better part of the human soul, exalting good and virtue, charity and love.

Among the best composers of the time who set to music the 7 azioni sacre of Metastasio, mention should be made, for the Passione di N. Signore (1730): Caldara (1730), Jommelli (1749), Morlacchi, Paisiello (1784), Zingarelli, etc.; S. Elena al Calvario (1731): Caldara (1731), Anfossi, Danesi, Leo, Giordanello; Giuseppe riconosciuto (1733), set to music 26 times; la Betulia liberata (1734), set to music 24 times, Reutter (1735), Jommelli (1743), Anfossi; Gioas re di Giuda (1735), Reutter; Isacco, figura del Redentore: Jommelli (around 1752), Cimarosa; La morte di Abele (1732), set to music by 22 authors: Reutter (1732), Leo, Piccinni, Jommelli, etc. In the third epoch, which runs from the death of Jommelli to that of N. Zingarelli (1837), the oratorio declined, rising onto the stage of the most fashionable theaters (especially under Ferdinand IV) as just another product of the frivolity of fashion. The names of the composers are many, but few are famous: among them, first of all, D. Cimarosa (v.) with Absalon (1787) and Il sacrificio di Abramo; N. Piccinni (v.) with Gionata; Giordanello with La distruzione di Gerusalemme, a subject that also attracted the attention of other authors, such as Pacini and Zingarelli (1811), who obtained a great success with it even at the Paris Opera: a notable example of scenic oratorio is the Mosè of G. Rossini (v.), written, on a libretto by L. A. Tottola, first as an oratorio in two parts for Lent of 1818, then reduced to an opera in 4 acts (1827), the form in which it is still performed today.

To increase the degeneration of the oratorio, in the 19th century, there is also added the so-called "oratorio cantore" [singer's oratorio], made up of pieces from theatrical works (arias, duets, etc.) stitched together with an unhistorical and anti-artistic criterion truly unheard of: of such a "pasticcio," which no longer has anything to do either with the oratorio form or with the theater, we shall cite only, as an example and as a piece of information interesting only to the history of manners, since every artistic intent is completely banished from it, S. Filippo Neri... ossia la letizia cristiana performed in Rome in 1840, in which, among other things, the Saint sings the aria Sonra il sen la man mi pose by Bellini. Fortunately these deplorable outrages against art and religion were soon set aside.

V. THE GERMAN ORATORIO IN THE 17TH-19TH CENTURIES

In Germany too the Filippine houses brought the Italian oratorio which, along with our melodrama, had a notable influence on Germanic musical art in the 16th-17th centuries. In the German flowering, one notes first of all the place of honor conferred on the oratorio by the Passion which, with a great affinity to the genre of the cantata, under whose influence it developed and grew, numbers among its distinguished cultivators composers such as a Bach and a Händel. At first the Passions were modeled faithfully on the authentic text of the Bible: among these are the works of Thomas Selle (1643), of Henrich Schütz, with his 7 Words: Sieben Worte Jesu Christi am Kreuz (ca. 1645) and the Historia des Leidens und Sterbens unseres Herrn und Heylandes Jesu Christi (ca. 1665-72), then of Christian Flor (1667), of Johann Sebastiani (1662), of J. Theile (1673); subsequently rhymed paraphrases came to be used, among which that of Brockes met with the greatest favor and was set to music by more than twenty composers (Keiser, Telemann, Händel, Mattheson); until the art of J. S. Bach made use of the two kinds of text, using the pure biblical text for the recitatives and modern poetic texts (by Brockes, and Picander, e.g., in the Passions according to St. John and St. Matthew respectively) for the arias and choruses.

After J. S. Bach, mention must still be made, as authors of important Passions, of his sons, such as, for example, Carl Philipp Emanuel, then K. H. Graun (Der Tod Jesu, 1755), Haydn, with the instrumental quartet reduced by others into vocal form with his revision: Sieben Worte am Kreuz (1783), etc. For the figure of J. S. Bach (v.), besides the two great Passions: Johannes-Passion (1723) and Matthäus-Passion (1729), one must recall the oratorio Weinachtsoratorium (1734), which consists of 6 cantatas to be performed successively on the days 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 requires the work of G. F. Händel ([v.] 1685-1739), who gave his music a very notable Italian imprint through his sojourns in our country and through the influence exerted on him by Carissimi through A. Steffani at Hanover. He too leaves a Passion according to St. John (1704) and a Passion nach Brockes (1720), but his most celebrated works are the biblical oratorios Esther, Saul, Samson, etc. and, most famous of all, the Messiah, performed in Dublin in 1742.

In Bach the oratorio reaches its full maturity; in his work the artistic and technical formation of the oratorio is shown to be formed of the three major exponents of the art of musical composition: the polyphony of the lauda of the mid-16th century is found in the broad sweep of his chorales, the monody of the lauda of the late 16th century lives again in the arias, while the narrative lauda echoes in the declaimed narration of the «historicus». The three elements merge in him, flowing from the sources of tradition to form a whole marvelously harmonious and complete of sovereign beauty. After Bach and Händel the German oratorio still counts three great names, those of the Viennese classics, but its expressive power is by now in decline and already among Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven one notes a lesser impetus in the oratorio compared with their other works. For Mozart and Haydn the Italian influence is still alive and powerful enough to impel them to clothe in music, whose style is wholly imbued with the most exquisite Italian vocalism, librettos in the Italian language. The former elaborates the Metastasian Betulia liberata (1771-72) and the latter Il ritorno di Tobia, performed at the court of Vienna in 1774-75. Different, however, is the Christus am Ölberg (Op. 85), written in 1800 and published in 1811 by L. van Beethoven, in which the Italian influence is by now weakened beneath the overwhelming, highly personal impetus of the Beethovenian style. In 1829 the Passion according to St. Matthew of Bach was taken up again, after a century of oblivion, and performed at the Singakademie of Berlin, under the direction of Mendelssohn, to whom musical history owes the composition of two oratorios: Paulus (1836) and Elias (1846). Romanticism now pervades the German musical world and contributes to giving the oratorio tones and colors of a melodiousness and passionateness that increasingly falsify its essence, which must necessarily be sober and serene, even while expressing the most tragic events. It suffices to cite A. G. Rubinstein (1829-94) who, although Russian, can be considered the last creature of the German romantic school, to complete, with his Das verlorene Paradies (Weimar 1858), the panorama of the Germanic oratorio in the 19th century. To a new current, however, belongs, although he too is a foreigner, Franz Liszt, who with the Leggende di s. Elisabetta (1862) and the Christo (1866) establishes in Germany the new school that propels a modern restoration of the oratorio with the return to the pure sources of the classical Roman tradition of Palestrina and Carissimi.

VI. THE ORATORIO IN EUROPE AND AMERICA.

1. In France

It had a great representative in M. Charpentier ([v.] 1634-1704), a pupil of Carissimi; in the following century it had Leseur and in 1800, besides David and Dubois, one cannot pass over in silence the name of Berlioz (v.) with the sacred trilogy L'Enfance du Christ (1850), of C. Franck with Les Béatitudes (1879) and of Gounod with the Rédemption (1882). In all these works, however, the influence of melodrama is so strong that any oratorio can be represented on the stage without its character being altered, since one is faced with an opera without scenery.

2. In Belgium

E. Tynel, a pupil of Gevaert, enriches the oratorio with lively colors for the instrumental and the vocal part, giving concrete form to his contrapuntal experiences in the oratorios Franciscus (1881) and Godelieve (1897).

3. In Spain and Portugal

In the Iberian peninsula mention must be made of G. Posile of Barcelona, who set to music among other things the Giuseppe riconosciuto of Metastasio (1633), and of D. Teriadellas in Spain; D. Perez with A. and C. de Silva in Portugal.

4. In England

In the awakening of the modern school there are found very significant oratorios. To be noted are Parry and Edgar, as well as W. Davies and W. Walton, who conferred swirls of sonorous grandeur on the choral parts of his Belshazar's feast (1931).

5. In America

Mention must be made of H. Parker (1931) with his Hora novissima and The legend of st. Christopher and Paine with the St. Peter.

6. In Italy

The current of restoration, which in the '80s saw the figures of Tomadini, Capocci, Raimondi, etc., did not remain silent in the 19th century, but on the contrary was more than ever fruitful, taking concrete form, besides in the works of M. E. Bossi, Tebaldini and Hartmann, in the work of L. Perosi: the Passione secondo s. Marco (1897), La Trasfigurazione (1898), La Resurrezione di Lazzaro (1898) and La Resurrezione di Cristo (1898), Il Natale del Redentore (1899), L'Entrata di Cristo in Gerusalemme (1900), La strage degli Innocenti (1900), Il Giudizio universale (1904), the Mosè (1901); with him the oratorio lives again, though filtered through Wagnerian symphonic experiences and those of an entire operatic age, the sweet echo of the most vital tradition of the Italian oratorio. Among the oratorios of the 20th century one also recalls La samaritana (1930) by L. Refice.

Luisa Cervelli