Weihnachts-Oratorium

Abstract

It was during the 17th century that the oratorio took on an established musical form. Previously it had existed as a succession of sacred dialogues, with a devotional purpose, which were performed from 1558 onward by members of the monastic community of St. Philip Neri (1515-1595! at their oratory (hence the name "oratorio") in Rome. The direct appeal of these "esercizi spirituali" soon made oratorio the sacred counterpart to opera, which was immensely popular in Italy. Giacomo Carissimi (1605-1674) created a key work in the development of oratorio with his Jephte (1650), and its style was soon widely imitated. In Germany the sacred "Historien" of Heinrich Schiitz (1585-1672) came close to oratorio, which at that time was understood as an extensive, non-liturgical vocal composition on a religious subject, generally with a narrator (testo, historicus, Evangelist) telling the story. The proximity to opera was no secret at the time when oratorio was at the zenith of its popu¬larity around 1700; at that time cantatas, oratorios and Passion settings were all described as 'theatre music". This state of affairs was not without its crit¬ics, and certain contemporaries, particularly among the clergy, made sometimes rigorous protests against the direction which the oratorio had taken. There were, however, "also those who derive satis¬faction from such vanities", according to Erdmann Neumeister, a Hamburg clergyman who wrote the texts for many of Bach's cantatas. Bach was among those who certainly derived "satisfaction" from imagining visual scenes with the help of theatrical music, and who did not hesitate to fashion church music in an "operatic" manner. This tendency of Bach's was indirectly confirmed by the fact that after his death the Leipzig Town Council expressed the intention to replace him not with a "Kapell¬meister", which they considered Bach to have been, but with a cantor, a church musician in the tradi-tional sense.