Meanwhile the oratorio, which sprang into life together with the opera, had been generally neglected. The first real oratorio, Cavalieri’s Rappresentazione di anima e di corpo, given in Rome in 1600, did not differ, except in subject matter, from an opera. The personages in the allegory were all acted; there were scenery and costumes. The same is true of the oratorio of Steffano Landi and Luigi Rossi. The form
began to differ from the form of the opera only with the works of Giacomo Carissimi, one of the most famous composers of the century. He was born near Rome about 1604, was probably trained in Rome, and held the post of choirmaster at S. Apollinari in Rome from 1628 until his death in 1674. Trained in Rome and living most of his life there, Carissimi was under the conservative influence of the church and all his music shows a musicianship far above that of any of his contemporaries, and more allied to the lofty perfection of the old polyphonic style. On the other hand, he did not fail to avail himself of the results of the new movement. Though in his masses he is a master of smooth part writing, not unworthy to stand beside Palestrina, in the choruses of his oratorios, when there is agitated or dramatic feeling to be expressed, he uses with equal ease a style broken and pointed with rhythm, which is wholly in keeping with the dramatic ideals of Monteverdi and none the less careful and artistic. In this certain ‘high seriousness’ of his work Carissimi is in sharp contrast with most of the composers of his age, who, carried high on the wave of the reactionary movement, often refused to subject themselves to the discipline of any genuine musical training and composed merely in a sketchy, unfinished way. All Carissimi’s work is marked by great finish. He was one of the few composers of the century who worked seriously to improve the new recitative style and his influence in this regard was far-reaching. Then, too, his treatment of orchestral accompaniments was anything but vague and indefinite. He was the first to differentiate the oratorio from the opera. In all his oratorios, of which ‘Jephtha’ and ‘Jonah’ are the most famous, the story is sung in recitative by a ‘Narrator.’ There is no action, nor scenery nor costumes, and the chorus is given a far more important part in the scheme than it ever found in opera. It was upon the foundation laid by Carissimi that Handel, nearly a century later, built up his own great oratorio.
Carissimi was, moreover, the first to perfect a form of music known as the cantata, consisting of recitative and arias for solo voice with figured bass accompaniment, a sort of vocal chamber music which was also suitable for use in the church. The form was further developed by Alessandro Scarlatti, and later by Handel.
In Germany the growths of both the oratorio and the cantata were greatly influenced by the more serious religious temper of the people and by the intimate personal religious sentiment which was the outcome of the Reformation. Naturally, the church music of the German composers was affected by the Italian schools, notably that of Venice, and by the general movement toward solo and concert style and the opera. But the chorales which, we have already seen, led to a form of organ music distinctively German colored all German Protestant religious music with a spirit that was completely wanting in Italian music of the same age. The chorale was incorporated into oratorios and into cantatas. The congregation was given a voice, shared in the musical expression of most profound and yet most intimate devotional feeling. By far the greatest of German composers of this time was Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), whose Dafne has already been mentioned. Most of his works were sacred. In the oratorio style belong the ‘Resurrection’ (1623), the ‘Seven Words’ (1645) and four settings of the story of the Passion, settings of the Psalms (1619) and the Symphoniæ sacræ (1629-1650). All these works, though full of dramatic feeling, are intensely religious, and foreshadow the great cantatas and the Passion of Johann Sebastian Bach, both in their richness of harmony and in their genuineness of feeling.
L. H.
FOOTNOTES:
[135] B., Nürnberg, 1653; d. there, 1706. See Vol. XI.
[136] B., Helsingör, 1637; d. 1707. See Vol. XI.
[137] See Riemann: Handbuch der Musikgeschichte, II², p. 127.
[138] See Riemann: Op. cit., II², 100 Cf. Chap. IX, p. 245.