Baroque Period Flashcards
Florentine Camerata
Part of the narrative surrounding the development of opera.
It is thought that opera partly developed from discussions in the 1570s led by Count Giovanni de’ Bardi of Florence and his group of friends who constituted an informal academy known as the Camerata.
The Camerata was made up chiefly of literary figures who met in the 1570s and 80s to discuss the music of the Ancient Greeks.
The leader and host of the Camerata was Count Giovanni de’ Bardi, and among its members were the musicians Vincenzo Galilei, Piero Strozzi (c.1550–1609), and Giulio Caccini; the poet and librettist Ottavio Rinuccini was associated with the Camerata, though he may not have been a member.
Mei’s discussion of ancient Greek music (that the entire text of Greek tragedy was sung) was a popular topic of discussion.
In 1592, Bardi went to Rome and Jacopo Corsi became the leader of the group. Two years later, Corsi and Jacopo Peri set to music Rinuccini’s Dafne (performed 1598); this was effectively the first opera, though only fragments of the music survive.
The Camerata was important mainly for the development of monody and of the stile rappresentativo; Galilei, in his Dialogo della musica antica et della moderna (1581), advocated these techniques as having been those of the Greeks and being more effective at moving the passions of the hearers, and Caccini was a pioneer in the composition (and performance) of monodic songs.
Intermedi
A type of entertainment popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly in Italy; it could involve music, drama, and dance and was performed between the acts of a play.
The first known intermedio performances took place at the Ferrarese court in the late 15th century. They functioned as a means of distinguishing one act from the next, perhaps setting the scene or indicating the passage of time; intermedi were later added before and after the play as well. The more popular type of intermedio involved singing, acting, and dancing and was usually based on a pastoral or mythological theme. Intermedi were not necessarily linked to the play they accompanied, or even to each other, though during the 16th century they tended to display greater unity or closer connection with the play.
Descriptions survive of many of the elaborate and spectacular intermedi performed in Florence in the 16th century, but a complete record of the music survives for just two: 1539 and 1589 Medici wedding celebrations.
In 1539, a five-act comedy, Il commodo, was staged with six intermedi written by G. B. Strozzi and set to music by Francesco Corteccia. The opening and closing intermedi, representing Dawn and Night respectively, were for a solo singer, whereas the central ones were for groups of singers and instrumentalists and generally on pastoral themes.
In 1589, the wedding of Ferdinando de’ Medici and Christine of Lorraine was celebrated with the most lavish and expensive intermedi yet, the scale of which completely overshadowed the play. The intermedi texts, by Giovanni de’ Bardi, Ottavio Rinuccini, and Laura Guidiccioni, were set to music by Marenzio and Malvezzi, with contributions also from Peri, Caccini, Cavalieri, Bardi, and others. As well as the texts and music (published in 1591), the designs for the costumes and sets for these spectacular intermedi survive. They are linked by a strong thematic unity, and their music embraces a wide variety of styles, from virtuoso solo songs to large-scale polychoral madrigals, each intermedio beginning with an instrumental sinfonia.
Intermedi such as these exerted considerable influence on the first operas, which themselves were developed in Florence and involved many of the same musicians and librettists.
This is seen particularly in Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607), which includes such elements from the intermedio tradition as pastoral, allegorical, and infernal scenes, spectacular stage effects, a rich orchestral accompaniment, and musical forms ranging from solo songs to large-scale choruses that use dance rhythms.
Intermedi continued to be performed even after opera was no longer a new genre: in the 1670s Stradella wrote some for the performances in Rome of operas by Cavalli, Cesti, and others. The tradition was taken up in 17th-century France by such composers as Charpentier.
Prima pratica/Seconda pratica
The terms prima pratica (‘first practice’) and seconda pratica arose during the controversy between Claudio Monteverdi and G.M. Artusi in the early years of the 17th century about the new style of composition and, in particular, its dissonance treatment.
Monteverdi’s style of composing secular vocal music, where irregular harmonies, intervals, and melodic progressions were used to express the meaning of the text, had been attacked by G. M. Artusi in his treatise L’Artusi, overo Delle imperfettioni della moderna musica (1600).
Artusi quoted specific passages from two of Monteverdi’s madrigals, Anima mia perdona and Cruda Amarilli (from the fourth and fifth books of madrigals respectively: 1603, 1605).
The composer defended himself in an afterword to the fifth book that was subsequently expanded by his brother, Giulio Cesare, in a statement, appended to the composer’s first collection of Scherzi musicali (1607). This defended the modern style, or ‘seconda pratica’, declaring it to be as valid as the prima pratica as exemplified in the works of such composers as Josquin, Gombert, and Willaert.
In the ‘first practice,’ the perfection of the part-writing was more important than the expression of the words, whereas in the ‘second’ the words are made ‘the mistress of the harmony, and not the servant’. Justification is also sought from classical precedent, chiefly in Plato’s Republic.
The seconda did not replace the prima – they were used for whatever the situation warranted.
Cipriano de Rore is said to have been the first master of the seconda pratica, followed by Gesualdo, Cavalieri, Marenzio, Wert, Peri, Caccini, and Luzzaschi.
Basso continuo/figured bass
One of the principal features of Baroque compositional and performance practice style.
Certain contemporary writers, for example Pepusch (1724), noted that the basso continuo ‘is the Thorough Bass, or Continual Bass, and is commonly distinguished from the other Basses by Figures over the Notes’, which are to be ‘realized’ on a keyboard instrument or theorbo.
A bass line with figures indicating the required harmonies. The figured bass was a feature of the Baroque period. Usually a bass instrument, for example the bass viol or cello, would play the single bass line while a keyboard or plucked instrument filled in the harmonies.
The prerequisite for the evolution of the continuo was the increasing tendency in the early 17th century towards bass-upwards harmony, and the contrapuntal orientation of treble melody and bass. During the late 16th century, instruments came increasingly to be used to accompany polyphonic choral works, mainly doubling the voice parts. Organs were nearly always present in church music, as manuscript sources indicate. In the first decade of the 17th century, bass (organ) parts began to be printed separately from the voices, as in Viadana’s Cento concerti ecclesiastici … con il basso continuo (1602)—the first publication to use the term ‘basso continuo’.
Monody
a modern term for the solo song with continuo accompaniment that flourished in Italy in the first half of the 17th century.
The members of the Florentine camerata had experimented with developing a new, direct style of singing in the late 16th century, aiming to recreate the power of ancient Greek music which they felt had been lost in the elaborate music of their own time.
Giulio Caccini, collection of madrigals and strophic arias for solo voice and continuo, Le nuove musiche (1602), marked the beginning of monody’s popularity and of a gradual decline in the popularity of polyphonic song, particularly the madrigal.
Freed by the presence of the continuo and the absence of other voices, the monodic vocal line could on the one hand follow closely the meaning and rhythm of the text, being declamatory and often syllabic and recitative-like, and on the other be much more virtuoso and highly embellished than was possible in polyphonic song. Key words in the texts set could be emphasized either by dissonances between the continuo and voice or by the addition of ornaments or other expressive effects in the voice.
Caccini wrote out much of his ornamentation, to ensure that singers did not improvise their own inappropriate embellishments. Le nuove musiche includes a long preface in which he explained the origins of his new style, which elsewhere he called ‘the noble manner of singing’, and gave detailed examples of the correct way to perform various ornaments and other vocal effects in order to achieve his aim of moving the listener’s soul.
Monody played an important role in the early operas of Caccini and Peri. In the preface to Euridice (first performed in 1600) Peri described his belief that in order to achieve the emotional power of ancient music it was necessary to ‘imitate speech in song’, using a declamatory style ‘lying between the slow and suspended movements of song and the swift and rapid movements of speech’.
Monody is a blanket term by modern scholars to describe Italian solo song with accompaniment. Recitative, aria, madrigal, etc. are all forms of monody, but composers at the time did not use the term.
Concertato madrigal (changes in the madrigal)
‘concerted’ madrigals include sections for vocal solo or duet with continuo accompaniment.
From the early 17th century, continuo parts were added to ensemble madrigals, but it was some time before genuine concertato music, including pieces for fewer than the conventional 16th-century five-voice group, was common. At the same time there occurred the rather more decisive and radical initiative of writing madrigals for a solo voice with continuo, through which the new Baroque style achieved its widest diffusion in Italy. By the 1630s these parallel developments had eroded the very concept of the madrigal as an independent genre.
Contemporary accounts suggest that instrumental participation in the performance of 16th century madrigals was widespread and ranged from the doubling of vocal parts to the purely instrumental performances of some vocal lines, including the reduction of a texture to a single vocal part accompanied by instrument(s).
The textural variety generated by the ad hoc participation of instruments in madrigal performances, and the increasing tendency of 16th-century composers to use stratified textures may be considered precedents for the reduced textures that characterize the concerted madrigal.
After the turn of the century, the concerted madrigal quickly gained in popularity and overshadowed the older type. The earliest true concertato madrigals appeared in Monteverdi’s fifth book (1605).
Monteverdi himself represented both types in his fifth book: Dividing a volume of madrigals into two groups, a cappella madrigals with optional instrumental support and truly concerted pieces with continuo obbligato, proved to be an attractive solution. Volumes of this kind were issued by composers including Monteverdi, whose sixth book (1614) is organized in two cycles, each consisting of a cappella madrigals followed by concerted ones.
The introduction of concertato techniques, whether involving the addition of a basso continuo alone or of upper instrumental parts as well, made available to early 17th-century composers a sound world that until then had been primarily the province of the performer. Contrasts of color and texture and the juxtaposition of instrumental and vocal blocks made possible new conceptions of form in which musical architecture could co-exist with poetic form, sometimes complementing it, and sometimes working independently of it to create abstract forms imposed upon and even contradicting the form of the text.
The opening of these new possibilities coincided with the passing, around the middle of the century, of the madrigal as a vital genre, replaced by genres like the cantata.
Monteverdi (1567 – 1643)
Italian composer.
At 16, he published some sacred madrigals. He entered the service of the Duke of Mantua.
He heard and was influenced by Florentine operas of the Camerata , notably Peri’s Euridice (1600).
His own first opera, Orfeo was produced in 1607. It is notable in the history of music because for the first time the accompaniment was for a full (by the standards of the time) orchestra. It is often described as the first opera to successfully combine drama and music.
The following year, his Arianna was performed at a ducal wedding celebration in Mantua; only the Lamento, which was immediately popular, survives.
Left Mantua and in 1613, began work for St Mark’s, Venice, where he composed a stream of sacred works which spread his fame throughout Europe.
12 of the operas he had written in Mantua were destroyed there in 1630 when it was sacked by Austrian troops.
When the first opera house, San Cassiano, was opened in Venice in 1637, Monteverdi’s interest in opera was rekindled and for the remaining 6 years of his life he composed a series of works of which only 2 survive.
His madrigals cover a period of 40 years, from publication of the 1st book in 1589 to the 8th in 1638 (the 9th was published posthumously in 1651). He soon introduced instrumental accompaniments, and chromatic modulations, and the dramatic nature of the music foreshadows the solo cantata and operatic recitative, culminating in Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624) which is a miniature opera in style, accompanied by strings and employing descriptive effects.
His sacred music veered between elaborate traditional polyphony and an advanced concerted style in which elements from his secular madrigals and operas lend color and drama to the text, as in the famous Vespers composed for Mantua in 1610.
The operas take the Florentine form and embellish it with all that he learned from Italian madrigalists and French composers. His L’ Incoronazione di Poppea (1643) shows the change in opera that occurred with the rise of the public opera house (including the historical subject, human emotions/characters, etc.).
Ground bass
Short thematic motif in bass which is constantly repeated with changing harmonies while upper parts proceed and vary. It originated in cantus firmus of choral music and became popular in the 17th century, particularly in England, as a ground for variations in string music. Examples exist by Byrd, Purcell, Frescobaldi, Carissimi, and Cavalli.
Stile concitato (genere concitato)
Term used by 17th-century writers after Monteverdi and widespread in modern literature, corresponding to Monteverdi’s own term, genere concitato.
This genere (‘genus’ or style) is one of three discussed in the preface to the composer’s eighth book of madrigals (Madrigali guerrieri ed amorosi, 1638): concitato (‘agitated’), temperato(‘moderate’) and molle (‘soft’ or ‘relaxed’), which, he claimed, corresponded respectively to the affections of ‘anger’, ‘moderation’ and ‘humility or supplication’.
The genere concitato ostensibly represented ‘that harmonia that would fittingly imitate the utterance and the accents of a brave man who is engaged in warfare’, a passage quoted from Plato which refers to the ancient Phrygian harmonia (Republic). Monteverdi claimed personally to have rediscovered this genere and to have reinstated it in its rightful place beside the other two. The threefold system of agitated, moderate and relaxed styles was, as Hanning has shown, a commonplace in ancient writers such as Cleonides, Aristides Quintilianus and Manuel Bryennius, who termed the styles ‘diastaltic’, ‘hesychastic’ and ‘systaltic’ respectively. It may have been transmitted to Monteverdi from the ancient writers by G.B. Doni.
In technical terms, Monteverdi defined his three generi in terms of vocal range and rhythm. The respective ranges appropriate to concitato, temperato and molle were high, medium and low; rhythmically, the ancient Greek pyrrhic and spondaic measures (used in antiquity for dances in armor and ‘calm’ dances respectively) were interpreted to represent concitato and molle. For the spondaic, Monteverdi chose even semibreves; he divided each semibreve into 16 measured semiquavers to represent the pyrrhic. Passages of rapid, beating semiquavers occur in a number of the works in Monteverdi’s eighth book, including Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (dated by Monteverdi to 1624), although there is no systematic use of the generi to reflect either Monteverdi’s twofold division of the volume into ‘warlike’ and ‘amorous’ pieces or his distinction between canti senza gesto and opuscoli in genere rappresentativo. The style is used also in his late operas.
Da capo aria
By 1680 the da capo aria (ABA) had gained a dominant position, though its dimensions remained small into the early 18th century. The trend seems first to have taken hold in Venice, still the principal market-place of opera. It certainly does not have the connection with Alessandro Scarlatti (see section on A. Scarlatti) that many writers, mainly out of a limited knowledge of the repertory, have suggested.
Lully (1632 – 1687)
French composer of Italian origin.
He was taken to France in 1646 as garçon de chambre and Italian teacher to Louis XIV’s cousin, Anne-Marie-Louise d’ Orléans.
By 1652, Lully had made an impression at court for his dancing, and the next year he was taken into court employment as compositeur de la musique instrumentale to Louis XIV, a position that involved writing music for the court ballets and dancing in them, bringing him into close contact with Louis XIV.
He was admitted to the Vingt-Quatre Violons du Roi but found the band lacking in discipline and obtained permission to set up his own Petits Violons of 16 players. From 1656 to 1664 he trained this band, which became widely famous for its precision.
In 1660, his ballet entrées for Cavalli’s Xerse and Ercole amante attracted more attention than the operas themselves, and the following year Louis made him surintendant de la musique de la chambre du roi. He became a naturalized French citizen, and a further mark of the royal favor, his appointment as maître de musique to the royal family, enabled him to marry the daughter of the composer Michel Lambert. They had three sons, all of whom became musicians, and three daughters.
A privilege to establish opera academies in France was granted in 1669 to Pierre Perrin; in spite of Lully’s initial scorn at the idea of large-scale dramatic works sung in French he was quick to take advantage of Perrin’s fall from favor at court and bought his privilege in 1672. Soon after, and following some vicious intriguing, he was granted the right to compose and produce opera at the Académie Royale de Musique, a monopoly he held for the rest of his life.
1673: The first tragédie en musique: Cadmus et Hermione was produced, libretto by Quinault.
Lully stifled any potential rivals by imposing arbitrary and often crippling limits, as his privilege entitled him to do, on any other theatrical productions: for example, no one was permitted to use dancers, more than two voices, or more than six violins.
Lully’s central achievement was the creation of French opera, and with it he established a style tradition that continued to dominate French musical theatre for more than a century—indeed his operas were unique at this time in retaining a place in the performing repertory for several decades after his death. They inspired several controversies among Paris intellectuals (French v. Italian; Lully v. Rameau; French tragédie v. Italian comedy; even Gluck v. Piccinni was affected by his shade).
Lully brought to the composition of lyric drama in French an acute understanding of French declamatory traditions and the non-metric structure of the language, devising a new musical style to accommodate them, one in which a uniquely flexible form of recitative (much slower-moving than its Italian counterpart, and unfettered by rhythmic constraints) could give full value to the words and their sense. He also devised a simple form of air, often using a dance rhythm, which could capture faithfully the nature of the sentiment expressed. He also created, using chorus and dancers, spectacular and effective divertissements, often with picturesque effects (tempests, sleep scenes, the underworld, for example). His dances are often highly attractive melodically, with unusual rhythmic structures.
French overture
festive musical introduction for an opera, ballet or suite. The form combines a slow opening, marked by stately dotted rhythms and suspensions, with a lively fugal second section. It originated with Lully’s ballet overtures of the 1650s and quickly became the sole pattern for French opera and ballet overtures. In its day it was much copied, borrowed and adapted, but gradually in the mid-18th century it gave way to more flexible, energetic or dramatic approaches, particularly the rival Italian sinfonia. The French overture is now regarded not only as a prominent Baroque form, but as an expression of the elegant tastes of 17th-century France, as an illustration of Lully’s penetrating influence, and above all as the earliest important genre of prefatory music for the stage.
Handel (1685 – 1759)
English composer of German birth.
1703: he decided to seek his fortune in Hamburg.
Hamburg’s main attraction was the opera, directed by Reinhard Keiser. Handel played second violin in the orchestra before becoming maestro al cembalo. He also had the opportunity to write his first operas, of which Almira, though a strange mixture of German and Italian, was evidently successful at its performance in 1705. Nero, performed soon after, was a failure, however, and by the time the huge score (now mostly lost) of Handel’s third opera was ready he had decided to learn his craft in Italy.
It is likely that he first visited Florence during his trip to Italy. He was, however, in Rome by January 1707, when he played the organ at St John Lateran. There he enjoyed the patronage of several distinguished and art-loving cardinals and became acquainted with Corelli, Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, and probably Pasquini too. He visited Florence again, as well as Naples and Venice, where he met Cardinal Grimani (who provided the libretto for the opera Agrippina) and the composers Vivaldi and Albinoni. The production of Agrippina in Venice in the winter of 1709–10 was a great success, and the work itself contains many of the components of Handel’s mature operatic style. In Venice, Handel also met Prince Ernst August of Hanover, whose brother the elector was looking for a new Kapellmeister. Handel travelled to Hanover and accepted the post on condition that he be allowed first to visit England.
Handel arrived in London in autumn 1710 and discovered a city ripe for Italian opera, in spite of the objections of London’s literati to such entertainments. He was employed at the Queen’s Theatre in the Haymarket and wrote Rinaldo, which was produced in February 1711. Though some of the music had originated in earlier compositions—it was Handel’s common practice throughout his career to recycle music, and not just his own—its arias and especially its elaborate staging caused a sensation. Handel duly returned to Hanover in summer 1711 and there spent a year or so writing chamber and orchestral music, but he was in London again by mid-October 1712.
In 1718–19, in an effort to create a more secure footing for Italian opera in London, members of the nobility, with the backing of the king (formerly George of Hanover), formed an opera syndicate on strictly commercial lines, known as the Royal Academy of Music. Handel was appointed musical director, and he immediately went to Düsseldorf and Dresden to recruit singers. The academy opened on 2 April 1720 and ran for nine seasons, mixing new works with revivals. It eventually closed, partly as a result of the star system. Handel became in involved in a number of different operatic business ventures following the closing of the Academy.
His dramatic interests found further outlet in oratorio. Handel’s masque Esther had been given private performances in London in 1732. Such was its success that it was presented in public at the King’s Theatre in May that year, though, on the orders of the Bishop of London, who objected to the staging of a sacred drama in a secular space, it was given without staged action. Thus performed it was the first oratorio to be heard in London, and it inevitably encouraged the production of others, among the first of which were Deborah (1733) and Athalia.
Handel died a national figure and was buried at Westminster Abbey in the presence of about 3000 people. Though his operas were soon all but forgotten, he was remembered in the years after his death through some of his instrumental music, such as the concertos, and some of the ceremonial church music, but particularly as an oratorio composer. His oratorio seasons were maintained from 1760 by J. C. Smith and John Stanley. Handel’s music, always the dominant model for his English contemporaries, remained a strong influence not only on English musicians (both in London and in the provinces) but also on such composers as Mozart and Haydn.
In England, a collected edition of his works was proposed in 1786 but not completed. However, 18th-century reverence for him is seen most clearly in the massive Handel Commemoration events mounted in 1784 at Westminster Abbey, which in turn helped to establish a fashion for the large-scale performance of just a handful of choral works—notably Messiah—that persisted, and shaped Handel’s reputation, until the mid-20th century.
Purcell (1659 – 1695)
Eng. composer and organist.
Son of Thomas Purcell, one of the King’s musicians. Boy chorister of Chapel Royal.
In 1674, he was appointed tuner of Westminster Abbey organ and at 18, in 1677, he succeeded Matthew Locke as ‘composer to the King’s violins’ (a string band of 24 players).
He succeeded Blow as organist of Westminster Abbey in 1679.
In the following year, he published the Fantasias for strings, written for his private enjoyment and not for the royal band. From 1680, Purcell began to compose the long series of ‘welcome odes’ and other official choral pieces. In that year, he also composed the first of the incidental music he wrote for the London theater, for plays by Dryden, Congreve, Shadwell, Brady, Behn, etc.
In 1682, he became one of the 3 organists of the Chapel Royal and in 1683 published his sonatas in 3 parts (2 violin, and bass, with organ or harpsichord), in the preface to which he admitted that he had attempted a ‘just imitation of the most fam’d Italian masters’.
In 1689, his only opera, Dido and Aeneas, was performed at Josias Priest’s boarding‐school for girls at Chelsea, but recent research has convincingly suggested that this may have been a revival and that the opera was composed at least 5 years earlier, probably in 1684.
In the last few years of his life, Purcell was increasingly prolific, composing some of his greatest church music, such as the Te Deum and Jubilate in D. In 1695, for Queen Mary’s funeral, he composed an anthem (Thou knowest, Lord, the Secrets of our Hearts), 4 canzonas for brass, and 2 elegies, which are among his most masterly works and were used for his own funeral later the same year.
Reputation: Purcell’s position as among the greatest of English composers was acknowledged in his lifetime, but it was not until the bicentenary of his death that this judgment came to be accepted by later generations. The work of the Purcell Society and of composers such as Holst and Vaughan Williams helped to rehabilitate him, and Benjamin Britten of a later generation paid him the compliment of imitation and also restored many of his works to the concert‐hall, aided by the 20th‐century revival of interest in performing the music of Purcell’s time in authentic style. Purcell’s brilliance of invention, his sense of drama, and the ‘common touch’ which endeared him to his contemporaries (both musicians and non‐musicians) give his music freshness and immediacy. In Dido and Aeneas, he composed the first great English opera and set a new standard of sensitivity to words and word‐rhythms in addition to displaying rare depths of emotion.
Oratorio
The usual meaning of the term as it is understood today is a sacred work for soloists, chorus, and orchestra on a large scale, neither liturgical nor theatrical, but intended for concert performance. The following is a rough history of the genre up until Handel:
16th century, as part of the resurgence of the Roman Catholic Church under threat from Protestantism, S. Filippo Neri, convinced that the spiritual health of the laity would be helped by supplementing the Latin liturgy with meetings at which religious matters would be expounded in the vernacular and in which the congregation would take part, founded an ‘oratory’ - a sermon was given and motets and hymns sung. These hymns sometimes told a story or had a framework of dialogue. At about the same time, the Society of Jesus in Rome, gave plays in the vernacular on religious themes, spoken with some music.
From these two roots sprang the first musical oratorios. The most remarkable of these was the Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo (performed 1600) with music by Cavalieri. The Rappresentatione was a lavish, fully staged entertainment with dancing; its allegorical story was in the tradition of medieval mystery plays and its spectacular elements after the manner of the intermedio. Because it was staged it has sometimes been called the first ‘sacred opera.’ Whatever we may call it, it certainly pointed the oratorio in the direction of opera. The word ‘oratorio’ was used of the building, rather than the composition, until as late as 1640. The 1620s and 30s in Rome saw the development of elaborate music at four oratories—S. Girolamo della Carità, the Chiesa Nuova, S. Maria dell’Orazione e Morte, and S. Maria della Rotonda—each for a slightly different audience of varying degrees of sophistication. Although the repertory has largely disappeared, we know that it used instrumental ensembles, choruses, and some first-rate solo singers. The composers involved were often experienced in opera, and significantly there were several works which could be described as ‘sacred operas.’
1640s, two major figures writing oratorios in Rome – Rossi and Carissimi. Rossi’s are more in the style of opera, while Carissimi’s were not. Overall, he is notable for using a narrator to tell the story and concentrating more on reflection than on action. His musical style is in the manner of late Monteverdi, with expressive recitative and arioso breaking into arias or set pieces. The choruses range from grand, exciting double-choir pieces to elegiac madrigals.
Oratories were set up in many cities in Roman Catholic countries. In Italy Bologna, Florence, and Venice took to oratorios in the 1660s, and in Rome they began to be performed elsewhere than in the oratory churches, sometimes being given in the palaces of the cardinals, especially during Lent or when for some reason (a scandal or an act of penitence) the theatres were closed. In these circumstances scenery was possible, though usually restricted to a backcloth and drapes, but there was no acting. Since this was the period of the growth of opera companies it was natural for composers to write both operas and oratorios, with the result that the two genres became even more similar. The role of narrator, common around 1660, had disappeared by the end of the century, and the popular subjects became hagiographical: the similarity of the lives of saints to those of operatic heroes and heroines provided an opportunity for love scenes in a genre nicknamed the oratorio erotico. There were usually about five main characters, and the texts were written in verse, while the conflict between good and evil offered opportunities for strong dramatic situations.
The history of oratorio music at this time is very close to that of opera. In the period 1660–80 there was still a flexible alternation of recitative, arioso, and arias (most of them still rather short). By 1700, a more regular alternation of recitative and aria was usual, the arias being more extended and in da capo form. The chorus was virtually abolished. The role of the orchestra increased, with grand overtures and full accompaniment in arias. It was in this form, of which Alessandro Scarlatti was the master, that Handel found the oratorio on his Roman visit.
Oratorios spread throughout Europe, particularly Catholic regions. In France, they met some resistance as a result of Lully’s growing monopoly. Only Charpentier (a pupil of Carissimi) exploited the genre. The genre was more popular in Vienna, which had strong Italian cultural ties. The genre was largely cultivated by the Italian court composers and was very similar to those being written in Italy, although the orchestration was generally more colorful.
It was slower to take root in Protestant areas of Europe. It was not until a public opera house opened in Hamburg in the 1670s that anything really like oratorio developed in Protestant Germany. The first German oratorio, in the Italian sense of the word, was by an opera composer, Keiser, whose Der blutige und sterbende Jesus (‘Jesus, Bleeding and Dying’, 1704) was a Passion oratorio without a narrator and not using any biblical text, for which it was much criticized when first given in Hamburg Cathedral. Nevertheless, his example was followed by Mattheson, who introduced women singers from the opera house into church performances, and by Telemann, whose mastery of both indigenous and foreign musical styles gave rise to some excellent works well worth reviving, notably Der Tag des Gerichts (‘Judgment Day’, 1762). The cantata proved to be more popular in this region.
Handel marks a crucial figure in the history of the genre. As a composer who worked in Hamburg and studied in Rome, his oratorios show the mix of these various styles and traditions. Handel’s mature oratorios (1733–51) were thus created from Italian, German, English, and even French elements. Handel used these elements in different proportions. At one end of the scale come Messiah and Israel in Egypt, which are constructed entirely from biblical texts in prose and are without dramatic personages, so that they are naturally close to the anthem in style. Others, notably Susanna and Theodora, are almost dramas in the tradition of the oratorio erotico. Saul, which uses the chorus as a participating character rather than merely a commentator, is reminiscent of Passion music and Italian opera, and has a scene suggesting a procession or dance. In others the elements are more evenly balanced, as in Belshazzar, where the drama is strong and the chorus skilfully woven into it, yet anthem-like choruses resembling those of a St Cecilia’s Day service occur. Two of his greatest works of the English oratorio type are on classical rather than Judaeo-Christian topics: Hercules and Semele. His oratorios are often more flexible in structure and drama, since they were free of the conventions associated with the opera.
