A History of the Oratorio: Vol. 1: The Oratorio in the Baroque Era: Italy, Vienna, Paris

Howard Smither has written the first definitive work on the history of the oratorio since Arnold Schering published his Geschichte des Oratoriums in 1911. This volume is the first of a four-volume comprehensive study that offers a new synthesis of what is known to date about the oratorio.

Volume 1, divided into three parts, opens with the examination of the medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque antecedents and origins of the oratorio, with emphasis on Rome and Philip Neri's Congregation o...