A History of the Oratorio: Vol. 4: The Oratorio in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

by Howard E. Smither

Overview

With this volume, Howard Smither completes his monumental History of the Oratorio. Volumes 1 and 2, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1977, treated the oratorio in the Baroque era, while Volume 3, published in 1987, explored the genre in the Classical era. Here, Smither surveys the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century oratorio, stressing the main geographic areas of oratorio composition and performance: Germany, Britain, America, and France.

Continuing the approach of the previous volumes, Smither treats the oratorio in each language and geographical area by first exploring the cultural and social contexts of oratorio. He then addresses aesthetic theory and criticism, treats libretto and music in general, and offers detailed analyses of the librettos and music of specific oratorios (thirty-one in all) that are of special importance to the history of the genre.

As a synthesis of specialized literature as well as an investigation of primary sources, this work will serve as both a springboard for further research and an essential reference for choral conductors, soloists, choral singers, and others interested in the history of the oratorio.

Originally published 2000.

A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807837788
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	09/01/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	856
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Howard E. Smither is James Gordon Hanes Professor Emeritus of the Humanities in Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Read an Excerpt

A History of the Oratorio

Vol. 4: The Oratorio in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

---

By Howard E. Smither

The University of North Carolina Press

Copyright © 2000 University of North Carolina Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8078-2511-2

---

Chapter One

The German Oratorio

Terminology, Cultural and Social Context

Terminology

When a musically educated German of the nineteenth century-whether composer, performer, writer about music, or informed layman-used the word Oratorium (oratorio) as a musical term, what sort of work might he have had in mind? Would he have used the term as freely as some might today for any long piece with chorus and vocal soloists that he would hesitate to call an opera? Or perhaps for any long work with a religious text, including not only Handel's Messiah and Samson, Mendelssohn's Paulus and Elias, but also Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, Verdi's Requiem, and Dvorák's Stabat Mater? Based on a survey of the kinds of pieces most frequently performed, written about, and published under the term Oratorium, the answer is a qualified no. While terminological ambiguity for oratorio occasionally appears in nineteenth-century Germany, the term was more precisely applied than it tends to be in our time.

Table I-1 lists the eighteen pieces most frequently termed oratorios in concert notices and reviews in selected German music periodicals of the time. For the most part the list suggests a clearly focused concept of oratorio as a specific genre. It is striking that over half the works listed date from the eighteenth century and represent the Baroque and Classical periods, while only six (by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, and Friedrich Schneider) were composed later than Beethoven's Christus am Oelberge. And equally striking is the frequency of references to performances of Haydn's Schöpfung. Explanations for such attention to eighteenth-century oratorios and such interest in Haydn's Schöpfung are proposed below, but for now the question of terminology must be pursued further. If these pieces were considered oratorios, what do they have in common?

To begin with the librettos-for the definition of oratorio, as we shall see, depends more on libretto than music-all but three treat themes that fall clearly within the Hebrew-Christian religious tradition. Yet even the exceptions have at least a tenuous religious dimension: Die Jahreszeiten, largely secular, includes references to God; Alexander's Feast, essentially on the power of music, praises a Christian saint and derives its libretto from John Dryden's Ode for St. Cecilia's Day; and Das Paradies und die Peri, based on Thomas Moore's Lalla Rookh (1817), is an oriental tale of mystical redemption. Of the clearly Hebrew-Christian texts, four use words predominantly or exclusively from the Bible, four combine poetry and biblical prose, and seven consist of newly composed librettos in verse. The librettos may be further described, quite generally, by aspects of literary presentation: narrative, dialogue among personages, and expression of personal emotion. More will be said of these literary types in chapter 2, but for now it should be noted that some of the librettos might be described as narrative-dialogic-reflective, others as narrative-reflective, and still others as dialogic-reflective. All the librettos have parts for chorus and soloists. Finally, the majority are long works, which would constitute a full-length concert (two to three hours or more), and are in two to four structural parts.

Thus, it would seem that music journalists-often following the designations in published scores and printed programs-usually applied the term Oratorium to a musical setting of a long libretto on a Hebrew-Christian religious subject, composed of verse, biblical prose, or both; the libretto includes narrative or dialogic passages as well as reflective ones, falls into two or three large sections, and includes parts for soloists and chorus. Journalists did, of course, admit exceptions, for they occasionally applied the label Oratorium to shorter works and to some that have librettos with little or virtually no religious content.

The libretto was typically set to music for soloists, chorus, and orchestra. Every piece in Table I-1 includes these elements, yet a few a cappella oratorios were composed for male voices.

Common to nearly every work in the table are some musical styles found also in opera. The eighteenth-century works employ solo styles of opera seria-recitative, aria, ensembles-while those of the nineteenth century adopt new procedures, including remembrance or reminiscence motives (Weltgericht, Elias, Elisabeth). Among nineteenth-century writers about the music of oratorio, some insist that the text be set in an "elevated style," that is, in the style of church music or in a style between church music and opera. Writers suggesting a certain stylistic level for oratorio include Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut and Gottfried Wilhelm Fink. In Thibaut's widely circulated Reinheit der Tonkunst, the author speaks of church style, dedicated to piety; oratorio style, which encompases human greatness and seriousness; and opera style, which deals with the senses and the passions. And Fink's article "Oratorium," in Schilling's Encyclopädie, views oratorio as a "middle style."

The choruses of oratorio and opera are particularly indicative of the stylistic levels of those genres. In oratorio the choruses tend to be more numerous and longer than those in opera, and often more contrapuntally complex, at times incorporating fugues-even double or triple fugues. Furthermore, several of the oratorios in Table I-1 include choral church music: chorales appear in the works by Bach, Graun, Mendelssohn, and Schneider, and Gregorian chant in Liszt's Elisabeth and Christus. While elevated and middle styles are common to the works in Table I-1, "lower" folklike styles are used only occasionally for special effect, most notably in the oratorios by Haydn and Liszt.

During the nineteenth century all the works in Table I-1 were typically performed in a concert hall-or, quite often, in a church functioning as a concert hall-and frequently within the context of a music festival. Most were originally intended for concert performance-but the works by Bach were, of course, originally for church. Graun's Tod Jesu was heard not only in concert but frequently as a devotional work during Holy Week in churches throughout German-speaking lands. On rare occasions oratorios with dramatic texts were decked out as operas, with costumes, staging, and action, and given in theaters.

Conclusions from the evidence of Table I-1 by no means exhaust the ways that a musically educated German might have used Oratorium, but they help to provide a general framework for his application of the term. A consideration of German aesthetic theory and criticism of oratorio, which includes more on genre definition, is found in chapter 2.

Cultural and Social Context

Judging from the perspective of the history of Western art music to about 1800, one would expect a list like that in Table I-1 to consist mainly of recent works. Before the nineteenth century, typical patrons and audiences ignored old music and cultivated new. Thus from an earlier perspective, it would be surprising to find Graun, Haydn, and Beethoven performed even in the second half of the nineteenth century, yet their oratorios had been heard continuously in Germany virtually since the time of their origin. The popularity of Graun's oratorio-clearly the one most often performed in Germany of the late eighteenth century-is explained largely by its effectiveness in meeting the chief musical requirement of Enlightenment religion: "edification" of the congregation, which means music calculated to touch the hearts of a musically uneducated flock rather than to praise God by high art. Religious practice changed slowly, and Graun's Tod Jesu sounded annually in churches and concert halls until the late nineteenth century-the Berlin Singakademie, for instance, performed it nearly every Good Friday from 1796 to 1884. That the oratorios by Haydn and Beethoven continued to be heard can be explained by a new critical attitude on the continent in the early nineteenth century (but already established in England). This attitude fostered the claim of a canon of exemplary music ("classics" of music) that deserved to be heard frequently as part of a "standard repertory." Table I-1 suggests that Haydn's Schöpfung unquestionably belonged within the canon, while Beethoven's Christus was a borderline case-in sharp contrast to his symphonies, which soon became permanent fixtures of the repertory.

While a continuous tradition of performing the major Classical composers extends from their time to ours, the same cannot be said for Bach and Handel. Their cases differ utterly from those of the other composers in the table. In Germany, their music was outmoded even before the mid-eighteenth century. Handel's works were rarely heard and Bach's were abandoned by all but a small circle of his admirers with an unconventional taste, mostly in Leipzig, Berlin, and Vienna. Even Messiah, in England an ever-sounding icon of musical and religious devotion from Handel's time to the present, was introduced in Germany as late as 1772; it was seldom performed there until the nineteenth century, and Handel's other oratorios fared even worse. For the Bach and Handel works that appear in Table I-1 to be heard with such frequency in Germany, they had to be revived from a state of considerable neglect in Handel's case, and utter obscurity in Bach's. Improbable as it may seem from a long historical perspective, they were indeed revived and widely admired. In fact, they significantly affected the style of nineteenth-century oratorio, and of church music as well. But why this revival of old music?

Any explanation of why German oratorio in the nineteenth century took the course-indeed the courses-that it did must explore several important strands in the fabric of nineteenth-century German political, social, and intellectual life. Particularly significant are the escalating cultural nationalism in Germany during and after the French occupation; romanticism, which began as a literary current in the later eighteenth century and became essential to the nineteenth century's view of music; historicism, an attitude that led to the revivals of Bach, Handel, and the Renaissance a cappella style, and to the restoration of plainchant, all of which influenced German oratorio; attitudes toward religion, which began to change during the Enlightenment and changed even more during the secularization of the nineteenth century; and the amateur choral movement-the formation of singing societies and choral festivals for which oratorios were often composed-resulting from a new middle-class cultural milieu and new educational ideals.

Each of these is a vast topic meriting book-length treatment and, except for specifically German nationalism, each describes a pan-European movement. The following brief accounts, however, focus on the aspects that relate closely to German oratorio.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from A History of the Oratorio by Howard E. Smither Copyright © 2000 by University of North Carolina Press. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Smither brings to a triumphant conclusion his survey of the oratorio. . . . Smither's treatment of this large and sprawling topic is exemplary. . . . All in all, this volume is an outstanding achievement, both in its own right and as the final installment of The History of the Oratorio. The four volumes together stand as an invaluable survey of the oratorio genre over five centuries, to be read with profit and pleasure by musicologists, music students, social historians, and the general musical public. Smither and his publisher, the University of North Carolina Press, are to be congratulated on the successful completion of one of the most important musicological projects of recent times.—Music Library Association Notes

Smither is to be congratulated that this huge project—a quarter-century in the undertaking—has led to a final volume which, like its predecessors, combines wide-ranging scholarly research with a style that is both accessible and enjoyable. No one with a passion for oratorio should miss it: no one with even a vague interest in the subject can fail to have that interest stimulated further. . . . A splendid final volume to a series which I am sure will remain a valuable source of information and reference for decades to come.—The Musical Times

With this massive volume Howard Smither brings to a triumphant conclusion his masterly history of a notoriously problematic genre. . . . [He] must be congratulated on this major contribution to historical scholarship.—Music and Letters

This book completes one of the most important historical surveys that has been offered to musical scholarship in this generation. Smither has maintained the high levels of research and writing established in the other volumes. His selection of works for detailed treatment amounts to a historical judgment of value which he alone is qualified to make.—Nicholas Temperley, University of Illinois

Howard Smither has written what will no doubt become the standard reference work on the history of the oratorio. His painstaking research sheds new light on the social contexts, aesthetic theory, and stylistic development of the genre. The rise and fall of the oratorio is meticulously examined through probing discussions of the familiar masterworks and extended treatments of the various national traditions. All in all, a splendid achievement.—R. Larry Todd, Duke University

Editorial Reviews

A splendid final volume to a series which I am sure will remain a valuable source of information and reference for decades to come.

The Musical Times

Smither and his publisher, the University of North Carolina Press, are to be congratulated on the successful completion of one of the most important musicological projects of recent times.

Music Library Association Notes

Smither has maintained the high levels of research and writing established in the other volumes. His selection of works for detailed treatment amounts to a historical judgment of value which he alone is qualified to make.

Nicholas Temperley

"Howard Smither has written what will no doubt become the standard reference work on the history of the oratorio. His painstaking research sheds new light on the social contexts, aesthetic theory, and stylistic development of the genre. The rise and fall of the oratorio is meticulously examined through probing discussions of the familiar masterworks and extended treatments of the various national traditions. All in all, a splendid achievement."--R. Larry Todd, Duke University

"Smither brings to a triumphant conclusion his survey of the oratorio. . . . Smither's treatment of this large and sprawling topic is exemplary. . . . All in all, this volume is an outstanding achievement, both in its own right and as the final installment of "The History of the Oratorio". The four volumes together stand as an invaluable survey of the oratorio genre over five centuries, to be read with profit and pleasure by musicologists, music students, social historians, and the general musical public. Smither and his publisher, the University of North Carolina Press, are to be congratulated on the successful completion of one of the most important musicological projects of recent times."--"Music Library Association Notes"

"Smither is to be congratulated that this huge project--a quarter-century in the undertaking--has led to a final volume which, like its predecessors, combines wide-ranging scholarly research with a style that is both accessible and enjoyable. No one with a passion for oratorio should miss it: no one with even a vague interest in the subject can fail to have that interest stimulated further. . . . A splendid final volume to a series which I am sure will remain a valuable source of information and reference for decades to come."--"The Musical Times"

"This book completes one of the most important historical surveys that has been offered to musical scholarship in this generation. Smither has maintained the high levels of research and writing established in the other volumes. His selection of works for detailed treatment amounts to a historical judgment of value which he alone is qualified to make."--Nicholas Temperley, University of Illinois

"With this massive volume Howard Smither brings to a triumphant conclusion his masterly history of a notoriously problematic genre. . . . [He] must be congratulated on this major contribution to historical scholarship."--"Music and Letters"

From the Publisher