Elijah Premieres
Mendelssohn's Elijah turned a prophet into opera-like oratorio and made the amateur chorus the hero.
Related
Time and place
26 August 1846, Birmingham Town Hall, during the Birmingham Music Festival. Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah was first performed in English, conducted by the composer. Julius Schubring prepared the libretto from the Books of Kings, and William Bartholomew made the English translation.
What happened
Elijah has forty-two numbers, with soloists, chorus and orchestra taking turns. The prophet announces drought, confronts the priests of Baal, hears a still small voice at Horeb, and is finally carried up in a whirlwind. Mendelssohn made the chorus more than a commentator: it is crowd, priests, people and angels, often answering a soloist directly. In Part II the alto aria O rest in the Lord sets the divine answer in a long, quiet line, intimate as chamber music.
What changed
Oratorio could have characters, scenes and continuous dramatic pacing like opera, without sets or costumes. Britain's large amateur choirs found a new work for their festivals, which became part of civic life. Mendelssohn combined Bach's counterpoint, Handel's choral writing and Romantic orchestral colour. Victorian oratorio largely took this piece as its model.
Listen to the turn
Begin with the prophet's recitative, the orchestra following the stresses of speech in short chords. Then hear the people's chorus press in from all sides. Finally O rest in the Lord, where soloist and strings fall very quiet, like wind passing a cave mouth. Three stretches place prophet, crowd and God in one room.
Related
This turn belongs to Romantic; see Oratorio and Counterpoint, and Trumpet.
Listen in the library
All tracks from midicn-lib — inline badge is the license tier (C1 commercial / C2 non-commercial / C3 study only).
Sources
- Grove Music Online, entry "Elijah" — premiere and revisions checked, not quoted
- R. Larry Todd, Mendelssohn, A Life in Music (Oxford University Press) — Birmingham commission checked, not quoted
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.