Oratorio

Schubert's interesting fragment Lazarus is strangely prophetic of Wagnerian continuity and has a morbid beauty that transcends its sickly text. There are signs that the despair of the Sadducee was going to be treated with some power. The result might have been a masterpiece ; but fate ruled that the next advance should again be Protestant.

Bach's Passions were rediscovered by the boy Mendelssohn after a century of ignorance of their very existence; and in St. Paul (Paulus) and Elijah (Elias) rose upon the early middle i9th century like the sunrise of a new Handel.

To-day

St. Paul has almost sunk below the horizon; and Elijah, which still shares with The Messiah the Christmas repertoire of every British urban choral society, is in many points an easy tar get for criticism. Yet the ascendancy of Mendelssohn is the one redeeming feature in the history of oratorio during the first three quarters of the 19th century. Let us admit the defects of Elijah; the all too lifelike tiresomeness of the widow (achieved after strenuous revision), the parochial softness of the double quartet, the Jewishness of the Jews (but is this a defect?), and the snorts of the trombones whose third summons causes the Almighty to capitulate: when all these unconscious profanities are discounted, there remains a vivid and coherent oratorio that, musically and dramatically, towers above later works by many accomplished composers who despise it. (See MENDELSSOHN.) Spohr is the only contemporary of Mendelssohn whose sacred music is still known. So tremendous a subject as that of The Last Judgment ought, indeed, to be treated with reserve; but the sof t ness and slowness which pervades nine-tenths of Spohr's work is not reserve but self-indulgence. Spohr has moments of vision; but an almost random glance at the pages of St. Paul shows that even in eclipse Mendelssohn has characterization, movement and the capacity for thrilling dramatic moments.

In England, the influence of Mendelssohn conkpleted the de vastation begun by our inveterate habit of praising the inspired literary skill of the sacred narrative, as a preface to our restate ment of it in 4o times as many words of our own. Deans and chapters listened in graceful official pride and imperfectly secret glee to the strains in which the cathedral organist celebrated with equal realism the destruction of Sennacherib's hosts and his own octuply-contrapuntal doctorate of music. Before 1880 our corn posers had, as Dr. Walker says, "set with almost complete indis crimination well-nigh every word of the Bible." Had they con fined themselves to the second chapter of Ezra they would have escaped dangers of unconscious humour that lurk in the oppor tunities for "naturalness" in declaiming the dialogues and illus trating the wonders of scriptural narrative.

Neither Sterndale Bennet nor Macfarren improved matters; but Parry and Stanford, towards the end of the century, com pletely changed the situation. Stanford's Eden has a libretto by Robert Bridges. The disgruntled professional librettists, who were also musical critics, had the effrontery to say that this mag nificent poem would be the better for extensive cuts. The real truth is that Stanford's music, especially in its orchestral intro ductions, is diffuse. But it has many beautiful features, and

achieves a coherent scheme on exactly such lines of Wagnerian continuity as can be applied to oratorio. Parry preferred to be his own librettist, and by this means he achieved more significant results. The lapses of the amateur poet are less distressing than the cliches of the ordinary professional librettist ; and the works of Parry and Stanford permanently raised English oratorio from squalor and made it once more an art-form which educated people could enjoy. Some of Parry's architectonic and dramatic ideas will never lose the power to thrill, if only the works as wholes can live in spite of a certain dryness of melody and heaviness of texture. For example, the exploit of Judith is shown with a total avoidance of the cheap and salacious opportunity for a scene between her and Holofernes. Instead, we listen to the watchmen anxiously making their circuit of the city walls in darkness. The music of their march is at a low pitch. It is reaching a normal close when, high above the tonic chord, the cry of Judith bids the watchmen open the gates to her. If this moment cannot thrill, there is no meaning in art. In King Saul Parry made a significant discovery as to the emancipation of dramatic oratorio from the stage conditions of time and space. The Witch of Endor prophesies the battle of Gilboa. Her tale becomes real in the telling and is immediately followed by the final dirge.

As with opera, so, but more easily, with oratorio, the method of Wagnerian continuity at last enabled composers to take extant poems and set them to music in their entirety. Thus the fragrant mysticism of Roman Catholic oratorio, dimly adumbrated in Schubert's Lazarus, at last came to fruition in Elgar's wonderful setting of Newman's Dream of Gerontius, while the 'old miracle play Everyman was very successfully composed by Walford Davies. In his later works, The Apostles and The Kingdom, Elgar pursues a comprehensive religious design on texts arranged by himself. Oratorio on the basis of Wagnerian continuity and Leit-motif is unquestionably a living art-form. Its greatest diffi culty is its fatal facility. The oratorio-composer is lost who omits to transcend the limits of the stage; yet when these are tran scended only the stedfastness of genius can prevent the composer from sinking to the fashion-storming eclecticism of Honegger's Le Roi David which, with the aid of a reciter to read the Bible, takes up the arts of all periods from Handel on and drops each of them before anything like an art-problem arises.

Why not follow more of ten the method of The Messiah and of Israel in Egypt; and deal with religious subjects in terms of prophecy and psalm ? Brahms's Deutsches Requiem is really an oratorio; and since its production (all but one later movement) in 1866 it continues year by year to tower over all other choral music since Beethoven's Mass in D. Form, disciplined form, is not the only thing needed to save future oratorios from the limbo of vanity; but it is their first need. (D. F. T.) ORATORY, the art of speaking eloquently or in accordance with the rules of rhetoric (q.v.).