A History of the Oratorio

Vol. 3: the Oratorio in the Classical Era

Howard E. Smither

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780807836613
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

The Oratorio in the classical Era is the third volume of Howard Smither's monumental History of the Oratorio, continuing his synthesis and critical appraisal of the oratorio. His comprehensive study surpasses in scope and treatment all previous works on the subject. A fourth and final volume, on the oratorio in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is forthcoming. In this volume Smither discusses the Italian oratorio from the 1720s to the early nineteenth century and oratorios from other parts of Europe from the 1750s to the nineteenth century. Drawing on works that represent various types, languages, and geographical areas, Smither treats the general characteristics of oratorio libretto and music and analyzes twenty-two oratorios from Italy, England, Germany, France, and Russia. He synthesizes the results of specialized studies and contributes new material based on firsthand study of eighteenth-century music manuscripts and printed librettos. Emphasizing the large number of social contexts within which oratorios were heard, Smither discussed examples in Italy such as the Congregation of the Oratory, lay contrafraternities, and educational institutions. He examines oratorio performances in German courts, London theaters and English provincial festivals, and the Parisian Concert spirituel. Though the volume concentrates primarily on eighteenth-century oratorio from the early to the late Classical styles, Smither includes such transitional works as the oratorios of Jean-Francios le Seur in Paris and Stepan Anikievich Degtiarev in Moscow. A History of the Oratorio is the first full-length history of the genre since Arnold Schering's 1911 study. In addition to synthesizing current thought about the oratorio, this volume contributes new information on relationships between oratorio librettos and contemporary literary and religious thought, and on the musical differences among oratorios from different geographical-cultural regions. Originally published in 1987. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

PART I
The Italian Oratorio

CHAPTER I
Social Contexts of the Italian Oratorio

Introduction: Terminology and Genre Definition

Characteristic primarily of areas with Roman Catholic traditions, oratorios in Italian and Latin were performed in a wide variety of social contexts, not only in Italy but also in Northern and Eastern Europe and in the Iberian Peninsula. The present chapter focuses upon the sponsors and social contexts of oratorios with librettos in the Italian language but also includes those in Latin. The latter, less widely cultivated, were usually like the former in virtually every respect but language. Therefore what is said below of oratorios in Italian may be understood as applying also to those in Latin unless a distinction is explicitly made. Wherever the Italian oratorio was cultivated, it retained essentially the same features and was described in approximately the same terms. Although the Italian oratorio’s libretto and music are treated mainly in chapters 2 and 3, a few words of introduction to terminology and genre definition are useful here.

In the context of the period and areas treated in the present chapter, what meaning or meanings of the word oratorio can be extracted from designations in printed librettos and musical sources and from writings about oratorio? Eighteenth-century Italian writings about oratorio are few, and all were written by poets and literary theorists and critics.¹ Among the earliest of the writings is Arcangelo Spagna’s “Discorso dogmatico,” printed in his Oratorii overo melodrammi sacri (Rome, 1706), which is discussed in volume 1 of the present study.² A contemporary of Spagna, the important Arcadian theorist Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni treats the oratorio briefly in his L’istoria della volgar poesia (Rome, 1698; 2d ed., Rome, 1714; 3d ed., Venice, 1730–31).³ Apostolo Zeno’s dedication to his collected oratorio librettos, Poesie sacre drammatiche (Venice, 1735), deals with his approach to the libretto.⁴ Francesco Saverio Quadrio’s Della storia e della ragione d’ogni poesia (5 vols; Bologna and Milan, 1739–52) includes a section on oratorio in volume 3 (1744), which depends heavily upon Spagna.⁵ Outside of Italy, among the dictionaries that define oratorio with specific mention of the Italian use of the term are Sébastien de Brossard’s Dictionaire de musique (Paris, 1703), Johann Gottfried Walther’s Musikalisches Lexikon (Leipzig, 1732), James Grassinau’s A Musical Dictionary (London, 1740), and Jean Jacques Rousseau’s article “Oratoire” in the Encyclopédie (vol. 9; Neuchâtel, 1765) and in his own Dictionnaire de musique (Paris, 1768).⁶

A unifying thread that runs through all of these writings is the concept of oratorio as a dramatic work, much like an opera, but with a religious text; Spagna, Crescimbeni, and Quadrio state explicitly that the oratorio is not staged—with scenery, costumes, and acting—in the manner of opera.⁷ The following brief description of the Italian oratorio in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is derived primarily from the present author’s study of a large sample of printed librettos and musical sources called oratorios in the period, but the description also conforms to the definitions of the term and descriptions of the genre found in the above-listed sources.

The term oratorio, when applied to a work with an Italian or Latin text in the period 1720–1820, usually refers to the genre identified by the same term in the first two decades of the eighteenth century.⁸ Until late in the eighteenth century, the characteristic libretto of an oratorio continues to reveal a two-part general structure, alternations of poetic meters intended for recitative and aria (as in opera seria), few choruses and ensembles, and biblical or hagiographical subject matter. The librettos of Metastasio were particularly favored and became models for other poets. Late in the eighteenth century, changes made in the oratorio libretto more or less parallel those made in serious opera, e.g., more choruses and ensembles and fewer simple recitatives. The music of an oratorio was much like that of an opera seria. During the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the musical changes in oratorio were mostly in the details of style and structure and were similar to changes in serious opera. Indeed, the major oratorio librettists and composers worked mainly in opera, and the sponsors and audiences for oratorio were often the same as for opera.

The type of composition commonly called oratorio, and so designated in all the writings from Spagna through Rousseau mentioned above, was also called by a variety of other terms. These terms usually relate to the poetic composition, for the prevailing concept of a vocal genre was that of a literary work intended to be set to music (just as an opera was a drama intended for music—dramma per musica). Zeno used three synonyms for the same works in this genre: oratorio in personal correspondence, azione sacra in librettos printed for individual performances, and poesie sacre drammatiche on the title page of his collected edition (but each work within that edition is called an azione sacra).⁹ A glance through the present volume’s appendix A, which includes title-page quotations of representative Italian and Latin oratorios, will reveal other synonyms for oratorio in addition to those used by Zeno, among which are cantata, carmina, componimento da cantarsi, componimento per musica, componimento poetico da cantarsi nell’ oratorio, componimento sacro, dialogo, dramma armonico, drama sacrum, and sacro componimento drammatico. The three most common terms for the genre are oratorio, azione sacra, and componimento sacro. Thus far no genre distinctions have been discovered among the works identified by these various terms, except for cantata: this term usually labels works that are shorter than those called oratorio, but exceptionally cantata is used for a longer piece that could equally have been labeled oratorio.

Most patrons and institutional sponsors of oratorio performances tended to foster traditions established in the Baroque period: oratorios continued to be performed in oratories, churches (but not during Mass), private palaces, and theaters. At times the performers’ platforms or theatrical stages were elaborately decorated. Yet the normal manner of performance continued to be that described by Spagna, Crescimbeni, and Quadrio, that which we might call a concert performance. Oratorios were characteristically presented with the orchestra on the platform together with the singers, who, music in hand, performed their parts with neither costumes nor acting in the operatic sense.

From the mid-eighteenth century on, however, works identified by the term oratorio or one of its synonyms—works like traditional oratorios in libretto and music—were increasingly staged in the manner of operas.¹⁰More prominent in Italy than elsewhere, this practice was particularly important from the 1780s to the 1820s in Naples, where staged oratorios were given in the theaters during Lent. (See the section “Theaters,” later in this chapter.) The staging of works called oratorio brought about a semantic change. In Italy of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, oratorio is used in two senses: the traditional sense, that of a sacred drama in concert performance; and a new one, that of an opera sacra. The new sense found its way into a music dictionary in the early nineteenth century: Pietro Lichtenthal’s Dizionario e bibliografia della musica (Milan, 1826) defines oratorio as either a staged or an unstaged work, and in his article on opera, he includes oratorio as a species of opera. The sacred opera, or staged oratorio, remained exceptional, both as opera and as oratorio, and may be seen as a symptom of the social changes that, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, initiated the decline of the Italian oratorio.

Italian and Latin Oratorio in Italy

The number of oratorio performances that must have been given in Italy during the eighteenth century is staggering to contemplate. In Rome, for example, each of two oratories—at the Chiesa Nuova and the church of San Girolamo della Carità—appears to have sponsored about twenty to twenty-five performances per year (the majority in the second half of the century) as is shown later in this chapter; private patrons, colleges, confraternities, and other institutions also sponsored oratorios—perhaps five to ten per year—which would bring the annual Roman average to between forty-five and sixty performances. Venice, Bologna, and Florence might have been as active as Rome; perhaps next were Naples, Milan, Palermo, Perugia, and Genoa; and these followed by Macerata, Padua, Foligno, Faenza, Lucca, Pesaro, Modena, Siena, Catania, Chieti, Pistoia, and a host of smaller cities and towns.¹¹ For Italian society, oratorio was clearly an important genre, cultivated in small towns and large cities and available to all strata of society.

The Congregation of the Oratory

For nearly two hundred years, from the early seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries, the Congregation of the Oratory—the members of which were known variously as the Fathers of the Oratory, the Oratorians, or the Philipine Fathers—was among the most active and consistent sponsors of oratorio performance throughout Italy. This community of secular priests together with its adjunct association of laymen was formed in Rome during the 1550s around St. Philip Neri (1515–95) and began its activities at the chu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• A History of the Oratorio: Volume 3
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Music Examples
• Tables
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• PART I The Italian Oratorio
• PART II The English Oratorio after Handel
• PART III The German Oratorio
• PART IV The Oratorio in French and Other Languages
• Summary and Prospect
• APPENDIX A Some Title Pages of Italian and Latin Printed Librettos Mentioned in the Text
• APPENDIX B Checklist of Composers of Italian and Latin Oratorios, ca. 1720–1820
• Bibliography
• Index
• Map