ORATORIO, the name given to a form of religious music with chorus, solo voices and orchestra, independent of, or at least separable from the liturgy, and on a larger scale than the cantata (q.v.). Its history is involved in that of opera (see ARIA and OPERA), but its antecedents are more definite. The term is al most certainly (but see Schiitz's "stilo Oratorio" on p. 844) de rived from the fact that St. Filippo Neri's Oratory was the place for which Animuccia's settings of the Laudi Spirituali were writ ten ; and the custom of interspersing these hymns among liturgical or other forms of the recitation of a Biblical story is one of several origins of modern oratorio. A more ancient source is the use of incidental music in miracle plays and in such dramatic processions as the 12th century Prose de l'Ane, which on Jan. 1, celebrated at Beauvais the Flight into Egypt. But the most ancient origin of all is the Roman Catholic rite of reciting, during Holy Week, the story of the Passion according to the Four Gospels, assigning the words of the Evangelist to a tenor, distributing all ipsissima verbs among appropriate voices, and giving the responsa turbae, or utterances of the whole body of disciples (e.g., "Lord, is it I?") and of crowds, to a chorus. The only portion of this scheme that concerned composers was the responsa turbae, to which it was permitted to add polyphonic settings of the Seven Last Words or the eucharistic utterances of the Saviour. The narrative and the parts of single speakers were sung in the Gregorian tones appointed in the liturgy. Thus the settings of the Passion by Vic toria and Soriano represent a perfect solution of the art-problem of oratorio. "Very tame Jews" is Mendelssohn's comment on the 16th century settings of "Crucify Him"; and it has been argued that Soriano's and Victoria's aim was not to imitate the infuriated Jews, but to express the contrition of devout Christians telling the story. On the other hand, ancient tradition ordained a noisy scraping of feet on the stone floor to indicate the departure from the place of the judgment seat ! And so we owe the central forms of Bach's Lutheran Passion-oratorios to the Roman Catholic ritual for Holy Week.
With the monodic revolution at the outset of the I 7th century the history of oratorio as an art-form wholly controlled by com posers begins. There is nothing but its religious subject to tinguish the first oratorio, Emilio del Cavaliere's di anima e di corpo from the first opera, Peri's Euridice, both pro duced in i600. Differentiation was brought about primarily by the fact that oratorios without stage-presentation gave opportunity for a revival of choral music. And oratorios on the stage discour aged, by reason of their sacred subjects, whatever vestiges of dramatic realism could survive the ascendancy of the aria (q.v.). For lesser composers than Bach and Handel this ubiquitous form represented almost the only possibility of keeping music alive, or at least embalmed, until the advent of the dramatic and sonata styles. The efforts of Carissimi (d. 1674) in oratorio clearly show how limited a divergence from the method of opera was pos sible when music was first emancipated from the stage. Yet his art shows the corruption of Church music by a secular style rather than the rise of Biblical music-drama to the dignity of Church music. Normal Italian oratorio remains indistinguishable from serious Italian opera as late as La Betulia liberata, which Mozart wrote at the age of 15. Handel's La Resurrezzione and 11 Trionfo del Tempo contain many pieces simultaneously used in his operas, and they contain no chorus beyond a perfunctory operatic final tune. 11 Trionfo del Tempo was a typical morality play, and it became a masque, like Acis and Galatea and Semele, when Handel at the close of his life adapted it to an English translation with several choral and solo interpolations from other works. Yet be tween these two versions of the same work lies half the history of classical oratorio. The rest lies in the German Passion-oratorios that culminate in Bach; after which the greatest music avoids every form of oratorio until the two main streams, sadly silted up, and never afterwards quite pure, unite in Mendelssohn.