Oratorio in the Baroque and Twentieth century.
Introduction
This essay compares and contextualizes oratorio in the Baroque and Twentieth century. That is, their differences in terms of orchestration, musical texture, form harmony, ornamentation.
Oratorio can simply defined as large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists and it contains biblical text. An oratorio composition includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. Oratorio can also be defined as an extended musical setting of a sacred text made up of dramatic, narrative and contemplative elements which is never staged
Oratorio in the Baroque
Baroque period, which was derived from the Portuguese word barroco meaning an irregularly shaped pearl. Baroque Period (ca. 1600 – 1750) has many diverse styles of music like the opera, oratorio, cantata, overture, concerto, solo sonata, trio sonata, keyboard sonata, suite, fugue, chaconne, passacaglia. Baroque period is known for prominence of bass and treble lines, Basso continuo which means thoroughbass, concerto medium, which is combining voices and different instruments and chromaticism which is the use in expressing emotions like using some accidentals for some sad moments.
During the Baroque period, there were so many composers and two of these composers reign in the late period of Baroque, they are the big hitting composers George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750).
Talking about Oratorio, which is the composition of a sacred text for chorus, soloists and orchestra. The details of these stories are conveyed through recitative, which is similar to Opera. Oratorio is not staged or the singers putting on form of costume and it is also presented in a concert hall. Oratorio in Baroque got to its peak with the works and compositions of G. F. Handel with works like La Resurrezione (1708), Ode for St. Cecilia's Day (1739), Israel in Egypt (1739), Messiah (1742), Joseph (1743), Semele (1744), Hercules (1744), Occasional Oratorio (1746), Judas Maccabaeus (1747), Susanna (1748), Theodora (1749), Solomon (1749), Jephtha (1751), Alexander's Feast, Saul, Joshua, The Triumph of Time and Truth (1757) and many more which are all biblical text.
G. F. Handel’s works (oratorio) and even the most popular works were all based on the Bible’s Old Testament stories like “Messiah” which has more text from the Old Testament than the New Testament except from the Part 3 of Messiah.
Though, not all of Handel’s oratorios are on sacred text. Works like Semele and Hercules are Mythological. Other compositions like Alexander’s Feast, Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day and also Handel’s last composition, The Triumph of Time and Truth are allegorical. The Biblical oratorios are always staying close to the original narrative, but the texts were rewritten in recitatives. Using Israel in Egypt as an example, it was telling the story of the Israelites whilst they were in bondage of the Egyptians which all of the texts of this compositions were words of scripture. Likewise, Messiah is also scriptural text and not telling no stories but a series of contemplations of the Christian idea of redemption which the works starts with Old Testament prophecies of the birth of Christ, His works on earth to His final Triumph and the return of Christ.
Function and Form
Oratorios are not meant to be a sacred music, but they are created for concert hall, which are more for the theatre than church settings. Sometimes in Handel’s compositions, he takes themes, sections and even sometimes the whole movements from other compositions that he will apply some changes, improvements and improvisations to the works. Most of Handel’s compositions in the oratorio make use of Chorus. It always has a story, which is more of a solo, air and end the story with the chorus. For example, “Hallelujah chorus” and “And the glory of the Lord” which are both from the Handel’s messiah.
fig 1.1 And the glory of the Lord (Chorus)
Choral Style
Oratorio Choral style in the baroque has a pictorial and effective musical analogy that is the most noticeable and charming attributes. Also, in the baroque, Bach and Handel who were the late composers of baroque has similarities in compositions. Handel’s style is simpler than Bach’s with less consistently contrapuntal, less subjective.
Baroque choral style alternate passages in open texture with firm and stable harmony; works are composed to be within the effectiveness and range of voices; a melodic line is sustained against another note in a faster rhythm (Allegro)
Oratorio in the Twentieth Century
The twentieth century, which is from 1st January 1901-31st December 2000. After the 1800, some composers specialised in the composition of oratorio.
New directions were taken in oratorio composition around the turn of the century in both Italy and England. Lorenzo Perosi rejected the oratorio volgare of the 18th and 19th centuries, with its heavy dependence on opera, and in his 12 oratorios (among them La risurrezione di Cristo, 1898; La risurrezione di Lazzaro, 1898; Il natale del Redentore, 1899; La strage degli innocenti, 1900; and Il giudizio universale, 1904) he consciously returned to the format of the Carissimi period, although his scale was larger and his materials were post¬Wagnerian. Most of Perosi's oratorios are in two sections and have Latin texts, including a storico, or narration, which, in the manner of Carissimi, is distributed among various vocal parts. His aim was to achieve a more serious religious expression than had been characteristic of Italian oratorio in the previous two centuries; to this end he made use of Gregorian chant and adopted a quasi¬ liturgical attitude, particularly in the numerous choruses. The oratorios of the Franciscan priest Pater Hartmann (Paul Eugen Josef von An der Lan¬Hochbrunn) continue in the direction established by Perosi. Of South Tyrolean origin, Hartmann was active mostly in Rome. His five oratorios (S Petrus, 1900; S Franciscus, 1901; La cena del Signore, 1904; La morte del Signore, 1906; and Septem ultima verba Christi, 1908) set Latin texts in a post¬Wagnerian harmonic style. Other 20th¬century Italian oratorios include Wolf¬ Ferrari's Talitha Kumi (1900), Malipiero's S Francesco d'Assisi (1921), Licino Refice's Trittico francescano (1926), Franco Vittadini's L'agonia del Redentore (1933), Antonio Veretti's Il figliuol prodigo (1942) and Luigi Dallapiccola's Job (1950).
In England, Elgar's Dream of Gerontius was not only the most important oratorio of the Victorian period but the most creative English oratorio since Handel. Based on Cardinal Newman's poem of the same name, Gerontius is the only oratorio by a Victorian composer to have retained a position in the performing repertory up to the present day. The work is organized in two large parts, and the music is continuous throughout each. Gerontius owes far more to Wagner's chromatic harmonic language, solo vocal style, motivic technique and orchestral¬vocal synthesis than any English oratorio before it. With Gerontius the English oratorio achieved the emancipation of the orchestra from its accompanimental role. Elgar's oratorio pair The Apostles (1903) and The Kingdom (1906) are more conventional for their biblical texts but at the same time unconventional for their continuity and structural flexibility, which continues the harmonic, melodic and orchestral style of Gerontius. Like Gerontius, they are full of reminiscence motifs, many of which appear in both works. Other important English oratorios are Vaughan Williams's Sancta civitas (1925), Walton's Belshazzar's Feast (1931), Berkeley's Jonah (1935), Fricker's The Vision of Judgement (1957–8), Milner's The Water and the Fire (1961), and Tippett's A Child of our Time (1939– 41) and The Mask of Time (1980–82). Paul McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio (1991) reflects his background in popular music.
American oratorios in the 20th century reveal a wide variety of musical styles, and most rely on traditional subjects for their librettos. Among them are Charles Sanford Skilton's The Guardian Angel (1925), Robert Nathaniel Dett's The Ordering of Moses (1937), Stefan Wolpe's Israel and his Land (1939), Bernard Rogers's The Passion (1942), Franz Waxman's Joshua (1959), Vincent Persichetti's The Creation (1969), Dominick Argento's Jonah and the Whale (1973) and Charles Wuorinen's The Celestial Sphere (1980).
Among the German¬language oratorios, of special interest is Schoenberg's Die Jakobsleiter (1917–22), a religious work only in the sense that it is concerned with ultimate human strivings. Despite its imagery of Swedenborgian mysticism, its philosophy is intensely individual, and individualistic: in the first part of the work (the second remained uncomposed, though Schoenberg's text is complete) various easy options to the struggles of living for truth are caustically dismissed. Die Jakobsleiter, unperformed until 1958, had no effect on the course of the 20th¬century German oratorio, which is better represented by Franz Schmidt's Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (1935–7) on texts from the Apocalypse. Other examples are Hindemith's Das Unaufhörliche (1931), Blacher's Der Grossinquisitor (1942), David's Ezzolied (1957) and the simple ‘folk oratorios’ of Joseph Haas (Die heilige Elizabeth, 1931; Christnacht, 1932; Lebensbuch Gottes, 1934; Lied von der Mutter, 1939; and Das Jahr im Lied, 1952).
The interest in sacred composition on Baroque models that grew in Germany between the wars produced few oratorios, but in Switzerland the fruits were more plentiful and included Willy Burkhard's Das Gesicht Jesajas (1933–5) and Conrad Beck's Oratorium nach Sprüchen des Angelus Silesius (1934). Both apply a severe neo¬Baroque technique, and Burkhard's piece achieves great force through its stark simplicity. Though not Swiss in origin, Wladimir Vogel took a Swiss subject for his most ambitious work, the oratorio Thyl Claes, fils de Kolldrager (1938–45); it is in two parts, each lasting a whole evening, and employs his characteristic polyphonic choral speaking. More impressive among the Swiss oratorios, however, are those of Martin: Le vin herbé (1938–41), In terra pax (1944), Golgotha (1945–8) and Le mystère de la nativité (1957–9). The first is an extended work based on the Tristan legend, but its scoring is for only 12 voices and eight instruments. Golgotha uses more conventional forces in a quite original form: the Gospel narrative is unfolded in seven ‘pictures’ separated by settings of contemplative texts by St Augustine. Le mystère de la nativité is a ‘scenic oratorio’ available for stage or concert performance, and in this it looks back to Honegger's Le roi David, composed in 1921 as a ‘dramatic psalm’ for the theatre and revised as an oratorio in 1923. The clearcut facture of this piece, the strong design of individual scenes and the lapidary use of melody and rhythm make it one of the most powerful oratorios of the 20th century. Honegger extended those techniques in Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher (1935), which was written as a stage spectacle for Ida Rubinstein, though it may also be given as an oratorio.
Similarly, Debussy's Le martyre de St Sébastien (1911), another Rubinstein commission, has often been given in concert performance with the spoken dialogue cut, but the reduction of this five¬act ‘mystery’ to a one¬hour oratorio is not entirely satisfactory. The fusion of genres was best achieved by Stravinsky in his ‘opera¬oratorio’ Oedipus rex (1926–7). Although the subject is secular, Stravinsky's treatment is liturgical in style, with the text sung in Latin, an important part for the chorus, and the principal actors appearing masked and stationary; the stylization and distance of the presentation are further accentuated by the vernacular commentaries given by a narrator in modern evening dress. If Oedipus rex is best regarded as an oratorio for the stage, concert performances can present the neo¬classical monumentality of the music, which still leaves room for Verdian effusions.
Stravinsky's oratorio represents a continuation of the genre's secularization, which began in the 19th century. Politically motivated secularization enabled the oratorio to enjoy a vigorous life in Russia, where oratorios had been rare. The oratorio became a medium for the expression of heroic and at times bombastic patriotic sentiments, as in Kabalevsky's The Great Homeland (1941–2), Myaskovsky's Kirov is with us (1942) and Shaporin's Story of the Battle for the Russian Land (1943–4). After World War II the demands of socialist realism produced, throughout eastern Europe, a huge number of oratorios in praise of party leaders or the proletariat. But the period also saw the composition of a few important works: Shostakovich's Song of the Forest (1949), Prokofiev's On Guard for Peace (1950), Sviridov's Poem in Memory of Sergei Yesenin (1955–6) and Pathetic Oratorio (1959), and Shnitke's Nagasaki (1958).
Elsewhere, new departures in the oratorio continued after World War II. Messiaen's La transfiguration (1969) almost dispenses with narrative and with solo voices for an immense, meditative theological exposition drawing on texts from the Bible, the Roman liturgy and Aquinas, and on musical materials characteristic of all periods in the composer's career. Notable among the oratorios of younger composers are Penderecki's Dies irae (1967) and Henze's Das Floss der ‘Medusa’ (1968), an ‘oratorio volgare e militare’ to a politically revolutionary text. Yet perhaps the most far¬reaching innovation was made by Krenek in Spiritus intelligentiae sanctus (1955), a Pentecost oratorio realized on magnetic tape.