Messiah Musings Part Three:

By Josiah Tazelaar

  What, exactly, is an oratorio and is "Messiah" a true oratorio?  This is what the Random House Dictionary states:

        "Oratorio":  An extended musical composition with a text more or less dramatic in character and usually based upon a religious theme, for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra, and performed without action, costume, or scenery."

    Encyclopaedia Brittanica characterizes, in its many pages of discussing Oratorio, the Bach Passions ("St. Matthew" and "St. John") as oratorios, but they are in a class by themselves (as are those by Schutz). Later composers, such as Haydn ("The Creation" and "The Seasons") and Mendelssohn ("Elijah" and "St. Paul") wrote oratorios, and EB considers Brahms's Requiem as a possible oratorio (due to its un-Latin and non-Catholic structure).  Berlioz's "l"Enfance du Christ" could be considered, and then there is Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius", composed in 1900. 

    But Handel was the unquestioned essential composer of oratorios.  Several were secular ("Hercules", "Semele", "Alexander's Feast"), but most were religious in content.  Now I had stated in my first installment that Handel "invented" the oratorio, but that isn't really so:  oratorios existed before Handel was born.  For instance, an Italian by the name of Giacomo Carissimi composed "Jefte" a century before Handel wrote one on the smae subject ("Jephtha").  Let's thus say that Handel "invented" the English oratorio in his desire to terminate Italian opera in England and create a suitable replacement in the language of the people, to inspire audiences to "moral" lessons through Biblical tales set to his music. 

    Going back to the Random House Dictionary's definition:  oratorio is a work more or less dramatic in character.  It is the "less" part of this which makes "Messiah" an oratorio.  Most of Handel's other oratorios are dramatic, like his operas (but far less ridiculous!).

"Messiah" is different from most of Handel's oratorios in that it is not "dramatic".  When Handel "re-invented" himself following his decision to stop composing operas, and following his serious illness, he continued to set stories to music, just as his operas had been, but they were Biblical stories, nearly all from Old Testament texts. 

    For instance, "Saul" (1739) has solo roles for bass (Saul), tenor (Jonathan), countertenor (David), soprano (Michal, Saul's daughter), and tenor/countertenor (Witch of Endor).  Scenes of David's battle with Goliath (Bass), the women praising David more than Saul, Jonathan's conspiracy against his father, Saul's throwing a spear at David, the scene between the Witch and Saul, and Saul and Jonathan's deaths and David's lament, are all presented dramatically. 

    Likewise, "Solomon" (1749) follows the Biblical story events quite carefully, and so does the tragic tale of "Jephtha"(1752), who, unwittingly, had to sacrifice his daughter to complete a deal he made with God.  There is "Samson" (1743), and "Judas Maccabaeus" (1747), and "Joshua" (1748)

    "Messiah", by contrast, has no solo parts for any of the characters in the story of Jesus, and no specific events, other than the birth and allusions to His ministry and trial and death, and eventual Resurrection.  So, it is "less dramatic", in the words of the Random House Dictionary meaning of the term "Oratorio".  Next, we'll look at this great oratorio in much more detail.

Continue to Part Four, click here

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

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