The complete idiot's guide to classical music (65 page)

 
Music Word
An
oratorio
is essentially an opera without acting, a dramatic and extended setting of a religious text (often taken from the Bible) for chorus, soloists, and orchestra. In our own century, a number of composers have devised oratorios on inspirational, though not specifically religious themes, such as Prokofiev’s
On Guard for Peace
, Shostakovich’s
Song of the Forests
, and Sir Michael Tippett’s
A Child of Our Time.

The oratorio traces its origin to the informal meetings or “spiritual exercises” of the “Congregazione dell’Oratorio” founded in Rome before 1600 by Filippo Neri. The name comes from the oratory (prayer hall) in which the meetings were held, and where Neri organized sacred plays with choral episodes. The music (as it tends to do), helped emphasize the religious lessons, while attracting people to the organization and spreading its membership to other cities. For this Neri was canonized, the first and only musician to achieve sainthood.

A century later, oratorio was well established as a musical genre throughout Europe, flourishing both as Oratorio Latino, sung in Latin, and Oratorio Volgare, sung in Italian with a sermon inserted between its two sections. Outside of Italy, the latter functioned primarily as a Lenten substitute for opera in Vienna and other Roman Catholic courts. By the middle of the 17th century, though, a German oratorio style had developed, using that language and accepted in Lutheran services. Heinrich Schutz wrote a Christmas oratorio in 1665, and Bach combined six cantatas in an oratorio to be performed on successive days from Christmas to Epiphany.

Handel imported the oratorio style to England, incorporating elements from the English masque and anthem, and fitting out all sorts of Biblical stories with virtuosic solos and robust choruses. Indeed, the oratorio reached its peak with Handel: Few composers thereafter would devote so much of their creative energies to the form; no oratorio since has matched the worldwide popularity of
Messiah
.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
When
Messiah
was premiered in London in 1743, one of Handel’s English friends complimented the composer on the “splendid entertainment” he had provided the listeners. “My lord,” Handel replied, “I should be very sorry indeed if I had only entertained them. My intention was to make them better.”

No way, of course, does this mean that the oratorio was all washed up. Masterworks in the form continued to appear in every succeeding generation. After hearing Handel’s oratorios during his visits to London, Haydn went home and wrote
The Creation
and
The Seasons
. London called again to Mendelssohn and he obliged with
St. Paul
and
Elijah
, while Berlioz’
L’enfance du Christ
and Liszt’s
Christus
gave further evidence that the oratorio was alive and well in the Romantic era. In our own century, Honegger’s
King David
, Walton’s
Belshazzar’s Feast
, and Stravinsky’s
The Flood
have all found audiences. For those who have sat through the
Hallelujah Chorus
once too often, let’s not forget
“Oedipus Tex,” “The Seasonings,
” and several other hilarious adventures in oratorio form by P.D.Q. Bach (alias Peter Schickele).

For nearly six centuries, from the Middle Ages through the Baroque era, the motet was one of the most frequently encountered musical forms, reigning with equal distinction in and out of the church. The term is derived from “mot,” the French word for “word,” although in Old French, that also signified a verse or stanza. Originally, an unaccompanied choral song, the motet grew in complexity with added vocal lines, and it later developed instrumental partnerships. Secular motets were often written in French, expressing the joys and tribulations of love and battle (or vice versa), while the religious motet used Latin texts within the context of church services. Later, these would be combined, the music fitted to bilingual texts.

Guillaume Dufay (c.1400–1440) a singer in the Papal Choir in Rome, and another composer who used “L’homme arme” in a Mass, created three-part song motets, but by the next generation, five or six parts had become the standard. Josquin des Pres (c.1450–1521) combined flowing melody and imitative counterpoint to add harmonic variety and vivid interpretations of the texts.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Josquin is often referred to by his given name only, and it’s a good thing too, since literally dozens of spellings of his surname (Desprez, Depret, Del Prato, etc.) have come down to us.

Tomas Luis de Victoria in Spain, Thomas Tallis in England, Hans Leo Hassler in Germany, and the aforementioned Giovanni Palestrina in Italy were among the many other masters who added immeasurably to the art and artistry of the motet. In France, birthplace of the form, grand motets, many of them psalm settings for soloists, chorus and orchestra by Lully, Charpentier, Lalande, and others, formed an imposing repertory for the King’s chapel. For quieter moments, there was the “petit (or little) motet,” with just two or three voices and continuo accompaniment.

After 1750, the motet was gradually dethroned as a major musical force, and although Mozart, Schubert, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Bruckner all created Latin motets, and Brahms contributed several in the German Protestant tradition, its use remained occasional and rather specialized. In the 19th century, Nicolas Slonimsky assures us, “the few composers who stubbornly cultivated it, particularly in Germany, did so more out of reverence for its Gothic past than out of inner imperative.”

 
Music Word
A
motet
is a type of sacred choral composition for church use, usually in Latin, though the words are not specifically part of the liturgy. It has the same purpose in Roman Catholic services as the anthem does (with English texts) in the Anglican tradition.

Although songs in adoration of God have been discovered from as early as 200
A
.
D
., and Latin hymns emerged toward the end of the fourth century, the word is most commonly applied to the vernacular pieces that came into use with the Reformation. (There were also Homeric and other early hymns that were paeans to ancient gods and heroes, but they need not detain us in this reverent chapter.)

In Christian worship, the early hymns were monophonic; gradually contrapuntal voices were added, and in the 15th century, polyphonic settings became a regular feature of the Vespers. Sixteenth century hymns tended to have four-part settings; later the vocal bass was doubled by the organ, and various combinations of voices, including solos, came into common usage.

 
Important Things to Know
When Professor Higgins sings his “Hymn to Him” in
My Fair Lady
, he’s indulging in a double pun, since a hymn is the generic name for songs in praise of God (i.e., Him with a capital H), while the good Professor uses it to heap praise upon the—as he sees it—highly superior intelligence, wit, and wisdom of the entire male gender.

The vernacular hymn arrived with the Reformation, and remains an integral part of Lutheran worship. The Anglican church adapted many Lutheran hymns in the 16th century (among them “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” supposed to have been written by Martin Luther himself), but the English Reformation then drifted to Calvinism, which opposed hymns in liturgical services. Puritans, you’ll recall, considered singing (along with most other pleasurable activities) an act of the devil, so for some two centuries, English parish church music was essentially restricted to the metrical psalm. It remained so until the 18th century, when nonconformists like John Wesley returned hymns and anthems to a central feature of English church services, new music was commissioned, and parishes began providing hymnbooks for the congregation to follow.

American hymns evolved from several sources, including the chordal English styles, but also incorporating gospel influences from the 19th century revival movement that reflected traditions of white and African-American Evangelical churches. Spirituals were (and are) often sung in black churches as well, but they are essentially folk songs with religious themes, rather than church music per se. On the other hand, the spirituals are among the greatest treasures of American music, welcomed in concert halls around the world in equal partnership to the greatest songs of Schubert or Brahms.