England and America, 19th century

16. Italy and Spain, 19th century.

The relatively few oratorios of 19th-century Spain appear to follow the conservative course of those in Italy, although sacred opera seems to have been less popular in Spain. Examples of the Spanish oratorio are Francisco Andreví y Castellar's La dulzura de la virtud (before 1819) and El juicio universal (1822), Ruperto Chapí's Los ángeles (1873) and Tomás Bretón's El apocalipsis (1882).

17. The 20th century.

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.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

general

antecedents

oratorio in italy and spain, c1620–c1720

italian oratorio and ‘sepolcro’ in vienna

protestant germany, baroque

handel and the english oratorio

charpentier and the oratorio in france

early classical and classical 18th-century oratorio

19th century

20th century