Oratorio

A oratorio is a lyric work, formally rather near to the opera: it is intended in theory for an execution in the enclosure of a church, for a particular occasion, or (nowadays) in concert. Its subject is generally monk: episode drawn from the Bible, the life of Jesus, more occasionally from the life of one (E) holy (E).

Origin of the oratorio

As its name indicates it the oratorio is an invention of members of the Italian religious order of the Oratoriens, at the 16th century. At that time it was interdict with the type-setters of opera to draw the argument from their work of a crowned subject. The goal of the creators of the oratorio was to circumvent this prohibition by creating a specific form which can approach this type of subjects while having the same potential of seduction as the opera. It is at the instigation of Saint Philippe Néri itself, founder of the order, that the kind was created, and it is in the church of Chiesa Nuova with Rome that the very first representation of oratorio with the creation of took place Rappresentazione di Anima E di Corpo Emilio de Cavalieri in February 1600.

In fact, all the history of the oratorio until our days shows that the kind will remain dependant on this relation little sliced with the profane music, including with " the age of or" kind (one will see for example Haendel using exactly the same airs in a profane opera and a oratorio on crowned subject…).

Characteristic elements

The oratorio quickly evolved/moved in various forms. It can be sung in Latin or vulgar language. It can be narrative and dramatic, with the manner of the opera, or nearer of the forms to the Cantate and the liturgy. In this last register, it is advisable to hold the very particular place which the kind of the Passion took, of which the subject, as its name indicates it, is the Passion of Christ.

However, in spite of the differences which one can find between several styles of oratorio, a certain number of distinctive structural features are common to the whole of the kind:

  • a general structure in two parts (possibly preceded by a instrumental Prelude);
  • the presence of one reciting (external with the action or identified with a character);
  • alternation, in the sung parts, of airs and récitatifs.

The oratorio not being intended for the scenic representation, the roles are not always individualized and one (E) even singer (singer) can interpret several roles.

The golden age of the oratorio

It is 18th century that the brightest successes date from the kind, those with which the name of the oratorio is most frequently associated: the '' Passion according to Saint Matthieu '' of Bach (1729), the '' Messie '' of Haendel (1742) and '' Creation '' of Haydn (1798). In a general way, one can say that the oratorio knows its golden age between the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 19th century.

If the specific incursions of Mozart ( the duty of the First Command , 1767, Bétulie released , 1771, penitent David , 1785) and Beethoven ( Christ with the Mount of Olives , 1803) hardly marked the kind nor the memories, certain type-setters show themselves very prolific in this field, like Alessandro Scarlatti, Vivaldi or Georg Friedrich Haendel: one allots to them with each one about thirty oratorios, even if the vast majority fell into the lapse of memory or were lost (in particular in the case of Vivaldi, whose only Juditha triumphans reached us).

Evolution of the kind at the time modern

The oratorio still knows some outstanding successes in first half of the 19th century, like '' Elias '' of Mendelssohn or '' the Childhood of Christ '' of Berlioz; but as a whole the kind seems to fall little by little in disuse. A certain number of type-setters consider it fixed from now on in an anachronistic esthetics.

In parallel, the 19th century sees, if not the appearance, at least the profane development of oratorios preserving in the broad outlines the structure of the oratorio " classique" but on not-biblical subjects and with sometimes a musical esthetics appreciably different from the guns of the kind, as it is the case for example with Schumann and its Pèlerinage of the Rose in 1851, who combines features suitable for the oratorio and the Lied. Schumann is the first to use the denomination of oratorio layman . In the years 1870, max Bruch also plays a determining role in the kind with Normannenzug , Odysseus , Arminius or Das Lied von der Glocke .

Conversely, of the type-setters start to write operas on crowned subjects. Saint-Saëns gives up drawing a oratorio from the history from Samson and Dalila and chooses finally the form of the pure opera. Richard Strauss will encase the step later to him a few decades with its '' Salome '' directly inspired by the play of Oscar Wilde. Meanwhile, Wagner will have presented its '' Parsifal '' like a crowned work; one also knows that it had projected, a time, to carry out an opera on Jesus himself (WWV 80).

However it is interesting to note that as well '' Samson and Dalila '' of Saint-Saëns that '' Salome '' of Richard Strauss was officially presented in England like oratorios until the beginning of the 20th century (the royal authorization to represent Samson and Dalila as an opera with Covent Garden goes back to 1910). On the matter, England showed itself more preserving and preserved longer than other countries of Europe a strict design of the oratorio.

It appears however that it is perhaps of such factors, a priori signs of a deliquescence of the kind, which, by making it evolve/move and by diversifying it, made it possible the oratorio to differently remain at the 20th century than in a form " fossile". On the contrary, that it is systematically, as Arthur Honegger (which composed a half-dozen of it), or in a more specific way, several modern and contemporary type-setters were interested in the oratorio, in its various forms: oratorio " liturgique" , oratorio dramatic of biblical, profane or pagan inspiration, without forgetting hybrid forms like the “opera-oratorio” ('' Œdipus Rex '' of Stravinski) or the “scenic oratorio” ('' Carmina Burana '' Carl Orff), the kind offers from now on a vast pallet of possible. A type-setter as Arnold Schönberg will as well test with the oratorio religious inspiration ('' the Jacob's ladder '') as with the oratorio on profane subject ( a survivor of Warsaw ) and with the opera on biblical subject ('' Moïse and Aron ''). At the dawn of the 21e century, the oratorio more necessarily resembles only it was time of Schütz, Scarlatti or even Haendel, but there is always practiced and remains open, as he was it throughout his history, with the experimentation.

Some oratorios famous

Some oratorios on profane subject

Some operas on biblical or religious subject

Notes and references of the article

Random links:Andrey Kashechkin | Rain (Mortal Kombat) | Conciliation | Cyrillisation of Chinese starting from the pinyin | Pierre Pear tree | Morue_de_cap