Oratorio

An oratorio (Italian pronunciation: [oraˈtɔːrjo]) is a musical composition with dramatic or narrative text for choir, soloists and orchestra or other ensemble.^[1]

Like most operas, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguishable characters (e.g. soloists), and arias. However, opera is musical theatre, and typically involves significant theatrical spectacle, including sets, props, and costuming, as well as staged interactions between characters. In oratorio, there is generally minimal staging, with the chorus often assuming a more central dramatic role, and the work is typically presented as a concert piece – though oratorios are sometimes staged as operas, and operas are not infrequently presented in concert form.

A particularly important difference between opera and oratorio is in the typical subject matter of the text. An opera libretto may deal with any conceivable dramatic subject (e.g. history, mythology, Richard Nixon, Anna Nicole Smith); the text of an oratorio often deals with sacred subjects, making it appropriate for performance in the church, which remains an important performance context for the genre. Catholic composers looked to the lives of saints and stories from the Bible while Protestant composers only to Biblical topics. Oratorios became extremely popular in early 17th-century Italy partly because of the success of opera and the Catholic Church's prohibition of spectacles during Lent. Oratorios became the main choice of music during that annual period for opera audiences.^{[citation needed]}

Conventionally, oratorio implies the sincere religious treatment of sacred subjects, such that non-sacred oratorio is generally qualified as 'secular oratorio': a piece of terminology that would, in some historical contexts, have been regarded as oxymoronic, or at least paradoxical,^[2] and viewed with a degree of scare-quoted skepticism.^[3] Despite this enduring and implicit context, oratorio on secular subjects has been written from the genre's origins.

^ "oratorio, (n.)". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 2023. doi:10.1093/OED/8713946143. A large-scale, usually narrative musical work for orchestra and voices, typically on a sacred theme and performed with little or no costume, scenery, or action.
^ Smither, Howard E. A History of the Oratorio. Vol. 2: The Oratorio in the Baroque Era - Protestant Germany and England. The University of North Carolina Press. p. 350. Seven works by Handel are sometimes classified as "secular oratorios": Acts and Galatea, Alexander's Feast, Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, L'Allegro, Semele, Hercules, and The Choice of Hercules.63 Nevertheless, none of these compositions was originally called an oratorio by its composer. In Handel's England the term secular oratorio was not used and would have seemed self-contradictory. Thus in a genre classification of Handel's works based on the terminology charac- teristic in England of his time, these seven compositions would be excluded from the oratorio category.
^ "Rev. of Semele. An Oratorio. Edited... by Ebenezer Prout". The Musical Times. 19 (424): 338. 1 June 1878. doi:10.2307/3357342. JSTOR 3357342. For want of a better term this work may be called a 'Secular Oratorio;' but... Arnold, not wishing to style it an Opera, mentions it as a 'dramatic performance' and certainly the nature of the libretto precludes the possibility of our surrounding it with any religious associations. Victor Schœlcher, in his Life of Handel... dwells on the absurdity of the feeling which, in the composer's time, prompted persons to forbid Esther or Judas Maccabaeus to be played in action, whilst they could listen with equanimity to Semele even in Lent, because it was 'after the manner of an Oratorio.'

[OED-1] "oratorio, (n.)". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. 2023. doi:10.1093/OED/8713946143. A large-scale, usually narrative musical work for orchestra and voices, typically on a sacred theme and performed with little or no costume, scenery, or action.

[SmitherVol2-2] Smither, Howard E. A History of the Oratorio. Vol. 2: The Oratorio in the Baroque Era - Protestant Germany and England. The University of North Carolina Press. p. 350. Seven works by Handel are sometimes classified as "secular oratorios": Acts and Galatea, Alexander's Feast, Ode for St. Cecilia's Day, L'Allegro, Semele, Hercules, and The Choice of Hercules.63 Nevertheless, none of these compositions was originally called an oratorio by its composer. In Handel's England the term secular oratorio was not used and would have seemed self-contradictory. Thus in a genre classification of Handel's works based on the terminology charac- teristic in England of his time, these seven compositions would be excluded from the oratorio category.

[MusicalTimes1878-3] "Rev. of Semele. An Oratorio. Edited... by Ebenezer Prout". The Musical Times. 19 (424): 338. 1 June 1878. doi:10.2307/3357342. JSTOR 3357342. For want of a better term this work may be called a 'Secular Oratorio;' but... Arnold, not wishing to style it an Opera, mentions it as a 'dramatic performance' and certainly the nature of the libretto precludes the possibility of our surrounding it with any religious associations. Victor Schœlcher, in his Life of Handel... dwells on the absurdity of the feeling which, in the composer's time, prompted persons to forbid Esther or Judas Maccabaeus to be played in action, whilst they could listen with equanimity to Semele even in Lent, because it was 'after the manner of an Oratorio.'

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