Oratorio

Sacred drama without staging, where chorus and soloists tell the story in concert.

Related

BaroqueRomanticOratorioVoice

Oratorio tells a sacred story without scenery or costume. Narrator, soloists, chorus and orchestra give drama without a stage, inside the concert hall.

Origins

In seventeenth-century Rome, religious groups met in an oratory, where lauda met biblical narrative, and Carissimi wrote early oratorios. Handel carried it to England, where Messiah, first heard in Dublin in 1742, won the public with English scripture and chorus. In the nineteenth century Mendelssohn's Elijah pushed it into the hall.

Listening features

Find the narrator first: recitative links the plot, often a tenor. Arias let characters reflect, while the chorus stands for the community and often carries the weight of the piece. Overture and chorus may share a theme, and the orchestra does more than accompany, painting storm, darkness and light. The scale is large, but without stage action the words and music carry the story.

Composers and works

Carissimi established the dialogue structure. Handel's Messiah and Judas Maccabaeus make the chorus the centre. Bach's Christmas Oratorio links six parts through the Gospel. Haydn's The Creation and Mendelssohn's Elijah carry it into the Classical and Romantic eras.

Lineage

It grows from lauda and sacred dialogue, parallel to opera and the Passion, and leads to the concert oratorio; it also feeds film choral writing.

Misconceptions

Oratorio is not religious opera, since it usually has no scenery, costume or acting. It is not limited to biblical subjects, since saints' lives and moral allegories appear. Nor is it always in church, since concert halls and festivals became its home after 1800.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry "Oratorio" — definitions and dating checked, not quoted
• Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 2 — context checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.