CHAPTER VII

EARLY AND CLASSICAL ORATORIOS

Origin of oratorio in the sacred drama of Italy--Cavalieri: ‘The Representation of Soul and Body’--Carissimi: ‘Jephthah’--Scarlatti; Stradella; other early oratorio writers--Development of oratorio in Germany; Passion-music and its development; Schütz: ‘The Seven Last Words of Christ’; ‘The Passion Oratorio’; ‘The Resurrection’--J. S. Bach: ‘Christmas Oratorio’; ‘Passion according to St. Matthew’; Graun: ‘The Death of Jesus’; other writers of Passion-music--Handel and the oratorio; ‘The Messiah’--‘Israel in Egypt’; ‘Judas Maccabæus’; ‘Samson,’ etc.--Haydn: ‘The Creation’; ‘The Seasons.’

The early oratorio had many of the essential characteristics possessed by its modern derivative. It always dealt with sacred subjects (the modern oratorio, however, frequently concerns itself with secular themes), it was almost always dramatic and its musical apparatus consisted of the usual four solo voices and the chorus with instrumental accompaniment.

In the liturgic drama of the Roman Church must be sought the origin of the oratorio, which, in a musically coherent form, appeared at about the same time with the opera, as the spiritual counterpart of its secular companion, making a devotional and intellectual appeal in place of the sensual. In the mediæval church two forms of the mass were in use side by side: the Roman office, which was mainly celebrated by the priest, and the Gallican Mass, a freer form, in which the people largely participated. Quite naturally the divergence between the two became marked and during the twelfth century the Gallican Mass was reformed with regard to lay participation. In order, however, that the people, who were attached to a form in which they took so direct a part, might be compensated for this exclusion, dramatic representations were devised, based on the Scriptures, all with reference to the great church festivals, especially that of Holy Week. In these the germ of the idea of the oratorio is to be found. These dramatic representations took the form of mysteries and miracle plays--dramatic versions of Scriptural episodes, with music, both sacred and secular, introduced to heighten their effect--as well as moralities, in which Christian virtues and mental qualities were treated allegorically. They included processionals of the type of the ancient _Festum Asinorum_ (‘The Ass’s Festival’), commemorating the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, which was annually celebrated at Beauvais and Sens as early as the twelfth century, and in which the celebrated carol, _Prose de l’Ane_ (‘Hymn of the Ass’), still preserved, was the central feature.

With the monodic revolution which was inaugurated at the close of the sixteenth century and which marked the beginning of opera, the history of oratorio as a distinctly musical rather than a liturgic art-form may be said to begin. The sacred musical drama was generally staged in the vestry or vestibule of church or convent--its ‘oratory’--and in course of time the term oratorio was applied to this music. In the oratory of St. Filippo Neri’s church in Rome (_S. Girolamo della Charità_) Animuccia’s settings of _laudi spirituali_ (sacred songs of praise) had already been sung in the sixteenth century; and the fact that these hymns were often used in connection with Biblical recitations is not without direct influence on the development of the form.

I

Yet it was not until the performance of Emilio del Cavalieri’s _Rappresentazione di anima e di corpo_ (Rome, in February, 1600), in which Time, Life, The World, Pleasure, Intellect, The Soul and The Body appeared, that the first actual oratorio was heard in germinal shape, during the same year that witnessed the world _première_ of all opera with Peri’s _Euridice_, which took place in Florence in December.

There was practically no difference in form between the first operas and the earliest oratorios, a statement borne out by the fact that Domenico Mazzocchi’s _Querimonia di S. Maria Maddelena_ rivalled Monteverdi’s _Lamento d’Arianna_ in popularity. Both opera and oratorio were constructed, musically, in the self-same way. Both were made up of recitative and arias, of choral and instrumental numbers, and both began with an overture. The angelic choruses of the first oratorios were musically synonymous with the bacchic choruses of the early operas. The difference between them lay only in the choice of subject-matter. And throughout the seventeenth century this continued to be the case, speaking generally, despite a certain divergence of viewpoint which had already made itself felt. How ‘operatic’ in character Cavalieri’s sacred score was, is proven by its composer’s employment of children as _dramatis personæ_, by the division of his work into acts, and by the use of worldly intermezzos, pantomimes and ballets. Interesting is the composer’s anticipation of Wagner at Bayreuth in his stage directions relegating his orchestra to a place ‘behind the scenes’ and out of sight. This orchestra, primitive in character, consisted of a double lyre, a harpsichord, a large guitar and two flutes. The use of the violin was recommended, though it was not insisted upon.

Cavalieri’s stage directions for the performance of his sacred drama are so interesting and throw so much light on the dramatic character of the early oratorio that they are quoted here, nearly in full, from Dr. Burney’s ‘History of Music’:

(1) ‘The words should be printed, with verses correctly arranged, the scenes numbered, and the characters of interlocutors specified.

(2) ‘Instead of the Overture or Symphony to modern musical drama, a madrigal is recommended, as a full piece, with all the parts doubled, and a greater number of instruments.

(3) ‘When the curtain rises, two youths, who recite the Prologue, appear on the stage; and when they have done, Time, one of the Characters in the Morality, comes on, and has the note with which he is to begin given him by the instrumental performers behind the scenes.

(4) ‘The Chorus are to have a place allotted to them on the stage, part sitting and part standing, in sight of the principal characters; and, when they sing, they are to rise and be in motion, with proper gestures.

(5) ‘Pleasure, another imaginary character, and two companions, are to have instruments in their hands, on which they are to play while they sing and perform ritornelles.

(6) ‘_Il Corpo_, the Body, when these words are uttered, _Si che hormia alma mia_, etc., may throw away some of his ornaments, as his gold collar, feather from his hat, etc.

(7) ‘The World and Human Life in particular, are to be gaily and richly dressed; and when they are divested of their trappings, to appear very poor and wretched, and at length dead carcasses.

(8) ‘The Symphonies and Ritornelles may be played by a great number of instruments; and, if a violin should play the principal part, it would have a good effect.

(9) ‘The performance may be finished with or without a dance. If without, the last chorus is to be doubled in all its parts, vocal and instrumental; but, if a dance is preferred, a verse beginning thus: _Chiostri altissimi e stellati_, is to be sung, accompanied sedately and reverently by the dance. These shall succeed other grave steps and figures of the solemn kind. During the ritornelles, the four principal dancers are to form a ballet, _saltato con capriole_, enlivened with capers or _entrechats_, without singing, and thus, after each stanza, always varying the steps of the dance; and the four principal dancers may sometimes use the _galiard_, sometimes the _canary_, and sometimes the _courant_ step, which will do very well in the ritornelles.

(10) ‘The stanzas of the ballet are to be sung and played by all performers within and without.’

As a matter of fact Cavalieri’s work was in reality a sacred opera, not an oratorio. Contemporaries of Cavalieri, Agostino Manni (_Rappresentazione del Figliuol Prodigo_), Anerio (_Teatro armonico spirituale_), Pietro della Valle (_Esther_, _La Purificazione_) and, somewhat later, Domenico Mazzocchi, Luigi Rossi, Ludovico Bellanda, Vittorio Loreto (_La Pellegrina Constante_, _Sacre d’Abramo_), Francesco Balducci (_La Fede_) and others, represent tentative gropings toward a more artistically satisfying formal and musical development of the oratorio.

II

The slow revival of choral art quite naturally found in sacred subjects the material best suited to treatment, not alone because of earlier sixteenth century associations, but also because such subjects did not over-encourage dramatic realism. Yet even Carissimi (1604-1674) had but little success in his efforts to establish a loftier spiritual standard in oratorio. He did much to perfect the recitative, and to add charm and variety to the instrumental accompaniment; he set aside the theatrical presentation, often gave dramatic details to a ‘narrator’ and laid more weight on the choral element. His music has real quality and beauty; yet the secular idea persists in his works and defeats his attempts to turn Scriptural dramatic representations into genuine church-music. Despite this, his work is valuable as a stepping stone--he was the first to write music which held out hopes of a future for the oratorio as a distinct art-form.

Giacomo Carissimi, from 1628 to the time of his death choir-master of the _Appolinare_ Church in Rome, was already renowned as a teacher and composer in 1650. It was in this year that Athanasius Kirchner, in his celebrated _Musurgia universalis_, a quaint mixture of scientific knowledge and childish hearsay, introduced Carissimi, with an analysis of his _Jephta_, to a wider circle as the perfect oratorio-composer. Nor is it without reason that Carissimi has been termed the Handel of the seventeenth century. His oratorios _Jonas_, _Jephta_, _Job_, _Diluvium universalis_, etc., he called _historie_, and the Biblical text on which they were founded was liberally interspersed with poetic supplementary matter to allow for the introduction of little arias and martial, elegiac or popular incidental choruses. The text was still Latin, though after Carissimi’s time the _oratorio volgare_, so called because it was sung in Italian and was thus distinguished from the Latin oratorio, supplanted the latter in popular favor.

_Jephta_ is, perhaps, Carissimi’s most characteristic work. It employs a Biblical subject, like all his other works of the kind, for Carissimi adhered strictly to this conception of oratorio, though many of his contemporaries shaped their cantatas and oratorios around the life of some saint. In _Jephta_, too, as in all the composer’s oratorios, the musical stress is laid on the choruses. These are not written in the style of the polyphonic madrigal, but in a simple chordal setting whose rhythm is conditioned by the word-accents. The fugue is absent, imitation and canon are suggested only in the duets. In nearly all cases the chorus serves to develop the dramatic idea. In the oratorio of the time, chorus is, in general, opposed to chorus, with the occasional relief of solo voices. Yet Carissimi secures considerable movement and variety by dividing more extended portions of his text into short sections, first sung by one or more solo voices and then taken up by the choruses _en masse_. Excellent examples of this procedure are to be found in his _Diluvium universalis_ and _Dives malus_.

Naturally, the harmonic structure of _Jephta_ and the companion oratorios of Carissimi seems almost pathetically simple to the modern ear, accustomed to the richness of chromatic harmonization. His modulations, save in a few instances, such as the chorus _Abit in montes_ of _Jephta_, are restricted to the keys of the upper and lower dominant. This lack, however, was not perceptible to listeners of the composer’s own generation. They enjoyed the rhythmic vitality and dramatic truth of his works, the vivid descriptive quality of the shipwreck music in _Jonas_, the idyllic charm of the two-voice movements to which the playmates of Jephthah’s daughter dance their rounds. And in _Jephta_ the composer often gained a depth of pathos worthy of a really great singer’s rendering. Such a number is the _Plorate colles_, a model of expressive writing. It was from this _Plorate_ that Handel borrowed twelve measures to use in ‘Hear, Jacob’s God,’ in his ‘Samson.’

All in all, Carissimi may be held to have laid down the lines along which the Handelian oratorio was later to develop. As a contrapuntal writer his great merit lay in the adaptation of the polyphonic idea to the new conceptions of tonality. He stands for the introduction of a more serious musicianship in oratorio work, and his influence was noticeably great and made itself felt in the works of his successors up to Handel’s time. Among these men who carried on his work (though often they were mainly active in the operatic or instrumental fields), two in particular stand forth, Alessandro Stradella (d. 1681) and Alessandro Scarlatti (d. 1725). These two men, in a manner, sum up the activity of many others, of Provencale, Vitali, Colonna, Leonardo Leo, G. B. Bononcini, Bassani, Ristocchi and Polaroli in Italy; of the Italian musicians in Vienna--Bertali, Draghi, Ariosto, Badia and M. A. Bononcini; and in Munich, Pietro Tosi. All of these composers wrote oratorios between the years 1650 and 1750 and developed in them the principles of Carissimi with more or less originality and success.

III

Alessandro Scarlatti, born in 1659 in Trapani, Sicily, the greatest representative of the Neapolitan school, was, it is asserted, a pupil of Carissimi. He wrote operas, cantatas, vocal and instrumental pieces by the hundred, and his oratorios alone number fourteen. Their titles show that he departed from his master’s strict adherence to Biblical subjects for his textual material. We have a _Maddalena penitente_, a _Sacrificio d’Abramo_, _Agar et Ismaele esiliati_, it is true, but also a _San Casimiro, rè di Polonia_, and a _S. Filippo Neri_. Like Carissimi he subordinated strict thematic counterpoint to the exigencies of a free and unconstrained leading of the voices, and with an added richness and elaboration of effect. He gave the aria a more definite structure, and made large use of rhythmic melody, in the manner of Gluck, to bring out the dramatic value of highly impassioned scenes, which in spoken drama would have appeared as monologue. Where lesser depths of feeling were to be plumbed, he used accompanied recitative and the _recitativo secco_ mainly for the development of the narrative itself. This general scheme of arrangement has been followed by later composers down to our own day.

Perhaps his oratorio _Il trionfo della grazia_, composed in 1685, which was a favorite as late as the early years of the eighteenth century, gives us as good a general idea of his sacred music as any other. It was also known under the title of _La Conversione di Maddalena_, as in it the Magdalen makes her appearance as a species of apple of discord between ‘Youth’ and ‘Penitence.’ In clever contrast such opposites as Gravity and Heedlessness, The World’s Curse and The Joy of Life, are used to enhance the moral and musical effect of the work. The second section of the oratorio takes up the conversion of the penitent sinner, and the music which the Magdalen now sings, full of pathos and gravity, offers a piquant contrast to the jolly melodies, embroidered with coloratura and shakes, which were her part before. Particularly beautiful is an instrumental symphony (in the older sense of the word) which, after the heroine has said the words, ‘A penitent and faithful heart shall see the heavens open,’ is wonderfully suggestive of the kneeling of the penitent woman. Schering calls it a musical pendant to Ribera’s celebrated picture of St. Agnes, in the Dresden galleries.

In another of Scarlatti’s oratorios, _Sedecia, rè di Gerusalemme_[72] (1706), we meet with a splendidly effective use of orchestral means--always remembering that the orchestra of that day was not our present one. The introductory _sinffonie_ is here nothing more or less than a violin concerto[73] in disguise, and the orchestra--consisting of obbligato and second violins, trumpets, tympani (especially prominent in the military music in Part I of the work) and oboes--takes an important part in the musical development from beginning to end. Among the vocal numbers might be instanced a particularly expressive duo between Anna and her son Ishmael (accompanied by an obbligato oboe); an aria of Ishmael’s, accompanied by two solo violins, and Sedecia’s two arias in Part II.

In this oratorio in particular, Scarlatti speaks with the accents of a master who is consciously striving toward the realization of a new ideal. It offers striking proof of the fact of how great Scarlatti might have become as a composer of oratorio had not opera so largely preëmpted his best efforts. The closing movement of _Sedecia_, a five-part chorus on broad lines, with incidental solo-quartet sections, recalls in its style the magnificent triumphal choruses of Handel’s oratorios. _S. Casimiro, rè di Polonia_ (1713) also contains arias of great beauty; and written during the master’s last period of creative

## activity, _La Vergine addolorata_ (1717) must be considered one of

his finest works. A ‘Lament of Mary’ printed by Raf. Carreras in his _El Oratorio Musical_ (1906), p. 188, approaches Bach in power and expressiveness.

The austere and serious power which Scarlatti infused into his sacred music was not attained by his immediate successors and contemporaries. But the master’s predilection for brilliancy and effect, when we compare his music with that of Purcell, though its greater dramatic interest and movement is incontestable, brought about, perhaps, a less degree of emotional expression and a less intimate touch in the portrayal of mood pictures.

Alessandro Stradella, born in Naples about 1645, was not as prolific a writer as Scarlatti, yet he left over 150 works (among them ten operas and eight oratorios) at the time of his early death--he is supposed to have been murdered in Genoa in 1681. He has much in common with Scarlatti. In Stradella’s works we find the same recurring suggestion of Handelian breadth and strength, and in general that freedom and grandeur of conceptive outlook which stamps the great composer.

Stradella’s best known oratorio is his _S. Giovanni Battista_ (about 1676). Its great artistic merit lies in its plastic musical portrayals of the characters of Herod and his daughter, and in the happy use of fiery, dramatic melody to limn them in tone; for as a musical character-painter Stradella may be said to have been Scarlatti’s superior, although his influence on the development of the form was not so great as was that of his contemporary. The romantic details regarding his personal life, many of them undoubtedly apocryphal, which recur in every biography, do not seem to call for consideration here. It is his contribution to the music of the oratorio only with which we are concerned, and in this respect he deserves a place beside Scarlatti.

The numerous composers of oratorio who lead from Carissimi, through Scarlatti and Stradella, to Handel and his more immediate German predecessors, have nothing especially new to offer. Scarlatti and Stradella accomplished much in the direction of both musical and purely formal development, but they were unable to establish a distinct line of demarcation between oratorio and opera. Italian oratorio was practically not distinguishable from the Italian _opera seria_ until as late as Mozart’s boyhood.

IV

Italian oratorio, by reason of its descent from the sacred church dramas and its close association with opera, has never been wholly able to break away from the element of recreation that was so conspicuous in its early use as a means of attracting people to attend church. And the complete separation between the recreational and religious elements did not take place until the oratorio passed out of the land of its birth into Germany, when it fused with the spirit of Passion-music and emerged a distinctly religious art-form. The connecting link between Italian oratorio and Germany was Giovanni Gabrieli, who, as the teacher of Heinrich Schütz, the greatest German musician of the seventeenth century, transmitted to his great pupil not only his technical mastery of the best of Netherland and Italian art-methods, but his own remarkable artistic sincerity and religious earnestness. It was Schütz who, from the different standpoint of Protestant faith as nurtured by the Lutheran Reformation, laid the foundations of modern oratorio.

Before tracing the influence of Schütz in shaping the future course of oratorio, it will be in place to sketch the origin and development of the Passion-music. The quasi-dramatic musical presentation of the Passion[74] is even more deeply rooted in the liturgy of the Roman Church than is the oratorio. It represents the artistic amplification of the reading of the Passion of our Lord, according to the evangels as prescribed by the church during Holy Week: on Palm Sunday the Passion according to St. Matthew, on Tuesday, St. Mark, on Wednesday, St. Luke, and on Good Friday, St. John. At an early period it had become customary to assign the narrative text and the words of Christ, of the Apostles, the High Priest and other individual characters to various singers, instead of having them read. During the period of the supremacy of Gregorian plain-song this mode of rendering this part of the liturgy resulted in the Passion chant (_cantus passionis_). This continued to be the only form used until the principles of polyphony were sufficiently developed to substitute a more elaborate form. Since the year 1200 and probably much earlier, the texts to be sung were divided among three priests, called ‘Deacons of the Passion,’ as follows: one chanted the words of Christ, another the narration of the Evangelist and a third the words of the apostles, the crowd, or others whose words are recorded. Passion-music, it will be observed, is much older than the oratorio and at the time that the latter began to assume shape and coherence, it already could boast of a considerable literature. When the monodic revolution brought about the development of the oratorio along lines similar to those of opera and encouraged the use of legends of the saints and Christian allegory as text matter, the Passion remained strictly bound to its original Biblical text, although the musical treatment of certain text portions in motet form (Passion Motets) was permitted. Not until the second half of the seventeenth century did Passion and oratorio in Italy draw near to each other, and only in the last quarter of the century was the story of the Passion utilized for the first time as subject-matter for a great oratorio.

Attilio Ariosti’s _Passione_ (1693) is probably the first work of its kind in Italy to present this subject with due dramatic emphasis and the use of musically adequate popular choruses. G. A. Perti’s _Passione_ (1685), on the other hand, is one of the type known as _sepolcros_, intended for devotional performance at a richly decorated Holy Sepulchre and serving principally as an excuse for tearfully exaggerated scenes of sorrow between Mary Magdalene and the disciples. After Ariosti’s _Passione_ Italian Passion music in its best manifestations may be said to have been taken over into the oratorio proper, with little but its text to distinguish it from the latter.

When Luther constructed the liturgy of the Church which followed his religious leadership, he borrowed from the Roman ritual, among other things, the custom of singing to musical accompaniment the story of the trial and death of the Saviour. About the middle of the seventeenth century German composers[75] injected into the existing Italian form a new spiritual and musical fervor, and an emotional expressiveness which was eventually to culminate in the great Passions of Johann Sebastian Bach. By the end of the seventeenth century the Passion existed in three distinct forms--the chant, the motet and the oratorio. Schütz cultivated particularly the last two forms with wonderful results considering the musical vocabulary of his period, but the Passion-oratorio, with its greater musical and dramatic possibilities, was best adapted to serve the deep religious fervor of Bach’s inspiration and to attain its final development at his hands.

Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), of Dresden, was the greatest of Bach’s predecessors as a composer of church-music. Familiar with the best music of Italy and a master of religious writing, he laid the foundation of the modern German oratorio. His ‘Resurrection,’ ‘Seven Last Words,’ and four ‘Passions’ represent the culmination of the form before Bach. Schütz, who has been called ‘the father of German music,’ was one of the greatest Psalm-writers of all times, though few of these compositions are so named but appear under such titles as ‘spiritual concertos,’ ‘sacred symphonies,’ motets, and ‘sacred choral music.’ Though his work was based on the Italian style, he was greatly influenced by Scandellus, one of his predecessors in Dresden as chapel-master of the Elector Johann Georg of Saxony. His finest choral works are the six mentioned above, all of which come under the general classification of oratorios. One of his greatest works, _Historia der fröhlichen und siegreichen Auferstehung unseres einigen Erlösers und Seligmachers Jesu Christi_, or ‘Resurrection,’ was written in 1623, for Easter service, it being the custom then, as now, in some of the important churches of Saxony, to sing the Resurrection on Easter day before the sermon, just as the Passion was sung on Good Friday. The vocal parts are accompanied by the organ and four _viole da gamba_, and the chorus is frequently in six and eight parts. The works of Schütz are characterized by simplicity of themes, which are always expressive and full of color. At times he becomes dramatic, but he is always devotional and reverential, and though he abandons the liturgical forms of Scandellus, many of his themes, though original, are based on liturgical melody or Gregorian chant. All trace of the Italian recreational element disappears; there is no suggestion of the stage or of ‘attractive’ effects and the only object before the composer’s mind is evidently to faithfully portray in music the solemnity and pious grandeur of the texts. This was the point of departure for German Protestant oratorio.

Another important work of Schütz was his setting of the ‘Seven Words of Jesus,’ written and performed in 1645. This departs even more from the liturgical chant, and the part of the Evangelist, instead of being chanted, is treated as a recitative, first for alto, then for tenor, then for soprano and tenor accompanied by the other two voices, thus bringing it into quartet form. The first and last choruses are in five parts and each is called ‘Chorus of the Congregation.’ After the first chorus and before the last (therefore separating the actual scenes from the chorus of the people), an instrumental number called _symphonia_ is inserted, thereby giving more dramatic force to the narration. These two symphonias are in five parts and while the instruments are not indicated, they were probably played by the strings. Parts of the work are very touching and beautifully expressive. For some unknown reason this work was not published until 1873 (228 years after its first production), edited by Carl Riedel.

Possibly his greatest work is his setting of the four Passions entitled _Historia des Leidens und Sterbens unseres Herrn und Heylandes Jesu Christi_ and following the text of the four Evangelists. This was written in 1665-66 but was not published during his lifetime and only the ‘St. John Passion’ exists in manuscript, but a complete copy of the four Passions was made by Grundig in 1690, comparatively soon after the death of Schütz. These Passions are built up largely with short choruses which, though conceived in deep devotion, are at times very dramatic. The parts not given to the chorus are recitatives in liturgical form, sometimes accompanied[76] and sometimes for the voice alone. The texts of some of the choruses were taken from well-known church hymns. The ‘St. Matthew Passion’ is the most fluent melodically. These settings of the Passion comprised the composer’s last works and in them lay the kernel of what was later perfected by Bach and Handel, both of whom completed in their respective lines what Schütz had begun. It has been regarded significant that the year of his birth was exactly one hundred years before that of Bach and Handel.

Schütz was still much under the influence of the Gregorian modes and did not attempt to break away from them in passages of simple recitative, but he also employed for simple harmonized passages many of the chorale melodies that were so popular all over Protestant Germany. But after Schütz plain-song practically disappears from German Passion and oratorio music and the influence of the chorale becomes more distinct and insistent. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Passion music was extensively cultivated in Germany and all her best composers gave it marked attention. Johann Sebastiani in 1672 produced a Passion at Königsberg, in which the narration is set entirely to original music and in which chorales, simply and effectively harmonized, are given more prominence. Thenceforward German church-music, freed from its allegiance to the old modal system, struck out paths of its own, and rapid progress was made. In 1673 Theile’s _Deutsche Passion_ was performed at Lübeck with extraordinary success and Reinhard Keiser, the Hamburg opera-composer, created renewed interest in this form by his setting of the Passion in 1704, which contained an innovation followed by all subsequent German writers of Passion-music. This consisted in what he called _soliloquia_, which voiced devout reflections on the solemn events of the Gospel narrative.

V

Bach’s extraordinary and single-hearted devotion to the cause of church-music led him very naturally to the door of Passion-music and oratorio, and he brought to the composition of these elaborate forms an unequalled mastery over all the technical devices of contrapuntal writing and a marvellous fertility of invention. A deeply religious and devout nature enriched the natural nobility of his musical speech, and scattered through the four oratorios from his pen that are preserved to us are some of his sublimest thoughts. These four are a Christmas-oratorio and three Passion-oratories--St. Matthew, St. John, and St. Luke (now regarded as genuine, though for many years considered spurious). Through the carelessness of his son Friedemann a St. Mark Passion and probably still another have been lost, for he is known to have written five Passions.

‘Christmas Oratorio.’--This work, written in 1723 and performed a year later, consists of six parts (in reality six separate cantatas) intended for the first, second and third days of the Christmas service, for New Year’s Day, New Year’s Sunday and Epiphany. While these belong together liturgically and are connected by chorales, there have been very few single performances of the entire work because of its very great length. The parts given most frequently are the first two, which are the strongest. The text, the story of the Nativity, is taken from Matthew and Luke, but is elaborated by passages taken from two of his secular works. This was a common procedure in the eighteenth century and as Bach had just written festival music for the birthday of the Queen of Poland and for other court festivities, parts of these joyful compositions easily adapted themselves to the joy of the Christmas season.

The first part opens with a sort of fanfare of trumpets accompanied by drums, which gives a distinct festival atmosphere as the people assemble for the first service; it is followed at once by the chorus _Jauchzet, frohlocket, auf, preisset die Tage_. The solo tenor narrates the part of the Evangelist and brings the attention of the worshippers to the joy of this specific festival. But Bach sees beyond the Nativity and anticipates the sacrifice and suffering of the Saviour, therefore the words of the Advent hymn, _Wie soll ich dich empfangen_, are set to the Passion chorale, _O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden_. This first part contains beautiful, simple melodies interspersed with chorales. An atmosphere, almost of Advent sorrow, pervades the part as a whole and is strongly contrasted with the second part which brings in the real, generally-accepted Christmas atmosphere. The second part opens with the well-known ‘Pastoral Symphony,’ so often played on orchestral programs and so charmingly idyllic, simple and naïve. It is built on two themes, one typical of the shepherds, the other of the angels. At the close of this the Evangelist continues his narrative, which is frequently interrupted by lyric passages and by chorales, such as _Brich an, du schönes Morgenlicht_. The beautiful tenor solo, _Frohe Hirten eilt_, following a bass recitative, is one of the most compelling numbers, but probably the finest from both a vocal and an orchestral standpoint is the lovely alto solo, _Schlafe, mein Liebster_. The part closes with a massive chorus of praise to God in the highest, sung by the angels, shepherds and the congregation.

As the other four parts are rarely performed, no detailed analysis is given here; however, these parts have been given together and are about as long as the combined first two parts. One of the most effective choruses in the last four parts is one in the fifth, _Ehre sei dir Gott gesungen_.

‘Passion According to St. Matthew.’--This stupendous work, now universally considered the finest work of its kind, was written in 1729 and performed on April 15th of the same year at the afternoon service of Good Friday in the St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, but was later altered and extended so that it was not completed in its present form until 1740. While it was frequently performed in Leipzig until the end of the eighteenth century, it was practically forgotten by the outside world until 1829, just one hundred years after its first production, when it was given on March 11th, in the _Singakademie_, Berlin, under the direction of Mendelssohn. This generous artist is deserving of the deepest gratitude for his untiring enthusiasm in compelling the world to recognize the grandeur of this work and the greatness of its half-forgotten creator. He was evidently deeply struck with the strangeness of his own relation to the rescuing of the great work from oblivion, for, in commenting on the performance, he made the following reference to his own nationality--the only recorded instance of this kind: ‘It was an actor[77] and a Jew who restored this great Christian work to the people.’ It was not performed in London until April 6th, 1854. The first American performance was by the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston in 1874.

The story of the ‘Passion according to St. Matthew’ was already embodied in the service at Leipzig and it was sung on Palm Sunday each year in choral form. The fact that the Passions were regularly given at church services, added to his own interest in the subject itself, probably inspired Bach to give artistic musical expression to the different versions of the Gospel narratives. While Bach wrote five Passions, four on the four Gospels and one by Picander, the greatest and last was the ‘Matthew Passion.’ The ‘Passion according to St. Luke’ is by many authorities not attributed entirely to Bach, for even though it were a youthful work, there are parts that cannot be reconciled with his general style of that period, though others bear his unmistakable stamp. Of the ‘Passion according to St. Mark’ only five lyric pieces are preserved in the Funeral Ode on the death of Queen Christiane Eberhardine. The Picander Passion is lost. The ‘Passion according to St. John’ was first performed at St. Thomas’ Church on April 7th, 1724, and is musically not much inferior to the great ‘Matthew Passion,’ but in the latter work Bach developed to a larger extent the element characteristic of the oratorio and united more closely the ecclesiastical and the folk-song quality. The fact that he was accustomed to the simple choral setting probably prevented him from giving anything like conscious dramatic effect, yet the complexity of his natural musical expression often led him to a dramatic climax of which he was not conscious, for his Passions were written for the church service only. As Bach was above all a devout Lutheran, he doubtless was imbued with the spirit of offsetting the grandeur of the Roman Mass with the combination of simple and complex forms in which the congregation could take part in the well-known chorales interspersed so artistically. Arthur Mees[78] speaks of Bach’s Passions as ‘the expression of the religious devotion of his own individual self as representative of his fellow-believers. Even the dramatic portions are not the utterances of actors in a drama, but those of the Christian congregation which is carried away in its contemplation of the events to the point of identifying itself with the actual participants in the scene.’

Between the two parts of the Passion it was customary in Bach’s time to have the sermon, as in the days of St. Philip Neri at Rome. As the performance of the Passion consumed more than two hours and the sermon lasted at least two hours, the Good Friday service was a most serious and weighty church event.

The first part of the ‘Matthew Passion’ is divided into three principal sections--Jesus with his disciples and the institution of the Last Supper, Jesus at Gethsemane, and the seizure of Jesus. The second part is divided into four sections--Jesus before the High Priest, Jesus before Pilate, the Crucifixion, and the last, consisting of madrigal-like elaborations of Bible texts. This part contains the famous bass aria, _Am Abend als es kühle ward_, which with its refined instrumentation is one of the most beautiful in the entire work, almost romantic in atmosphere and remarkably lyric. Among the many notable characteristics of this work is the accompanying of the words of Jesus by the orchestra in place of the usual _continuo_. The Daughter of Zion, whose words were given by other composers to a definite voice, no longer appears as an individual, but her words are sung in turn by alto, soprano, tenor and bass solos, in duets and in choral form.

While a large part of the text (from chapters XXVI and XXVII of Matthew’s Gospel) was doubtless compiled by Bach himself, he had able assistance from the poet Picander (whose real name was Friedrich Henrici), who wrote many of the hymns and who has already been referred to as the poet of the lost Passion, considered of little value because of the inadequacy of the text.

With Bach’s ‘Matthew Passion’ the development of the Protestant Church music in this form came to an abrupt close for the simple reason that no one since Bach’s time has possessed the necessary technical and musical equipment for further progress. In this glorious work, which next to his own ‘B minor Mass’ is probably his most sublime utterance, he seems to have completely grasped the touching pathos and the poignant sorrow of the scenes unfolded in the Gospel narratives of the Passion and, in interpreting them through the religious experience of a devout believer, to have exhausted the vocabulary of music appropriate to the liturgy of which this Scriptural narrative forms an impressive part. However, other Passions were written after Bach’s settings were made and the most famous of them is Graun’s _Der Tod Jesu_, which is spoken of in some detail below. Handel made two settings of the Passion, one of which (‘The Passion of Christ’ to a poem by B. H. Brockes of Hamburg) is in existence. It was written probably about 1716 and the composer introduced no fewer than twenty of its numbers into later works, some altered, some transferred bodily. Haydn’s Passion (‘The Seven Words of Our Saviour’) has already been spoken of under cantatas (