"Oratorio" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... undeniable validity. The reply would be that the growth of them is only evidence of what was potentially present from the first, that just as the beating of brass was no obstacle to the ultimate evolution of the opera or the oratorio, or the first vague feelings of wonderment with which primitive man surveyed himself and his surroundings to the creation of the world of science and philosophy, so the undoubted fact that man was unmoral ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... no!" she said, shaking her head. "It is the future I think of. I wish to hear you in grand opera or in oratorio—I wish to see you a great artist—that is something noble, something ambitious, something to work for day and night. Ah, Leo, when I hear Mr. Santley sing 'Why do the nations'—when I see the thousands and ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... his troubles in his music; Mozart was content to ravish the angels of their harps. And as for Johann Sebastian, "there was more real musical feeling, uplifting and sincerity in the old Thomas-kirche in Leipzig ... than in all your modern symphony and oratorio machine-made concerts ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... honour of Queen Christina of Sweden (1679), is specially noted; or, according to Mendel, he wrote two successful operas, one for the opening of the Teatro Capranica, and a second for the festivals. He also wrote an oratorio: La Sete di Christo. Pasquini ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... what he had read about them." He did not know Bach. Happy ignorance! He was able to write oratorios like L'Enfance du Christ without being worried by memories and traditions of the German masters of oratorio. There are men like Brahms who have been, nearly all their life, but reflections of the past. Berlioz never sought to be anything but himself. It was thus that he created that masterpiece, La Fuite en Egypte, which sprang from his keen ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... perpetually talking of our Oratorios, and they were perpetually talking of their Symphonies. Did we forget and did they forget his immortal friend and countryman, Rossini? What was Moses in Egypt but a sublime oratorio, which was acted on the stage instead of being coldly sung in a concert-room? What was the overture to Guillaume Tell but a symphony under another name? Had I heard Moses in Egypt? Would I listen to this, and this, and this, and ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... meet, Set out with Papa, to see Louis Dix-huit Make his bow to some half-dozen women and boys, Who get up a small concert of shrill Vive le Rois— And how vastly genteeler, my clear, even this is, Than vulgar Pall-Mall's oratorio of hisses! The gardens seem'd full—so, of course, we walk'd o'er 'em, 'Mong orange-trees, clipp'd into town-bred decorum, And Daphnes, and vases, and many a statue There staring, with not even a stitch on them, at you! The ponds, too, we view'd—stood awhile on the brink To ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... across the room had a union of conscious stateliness and virgin grace which became her style of beauty; it was in itself the introduction to fine music. Mrs. Rossall went to accompany. Choice was made of a solo from an oratorio; Beatrice never sang trivialities of the day, a noteworthy variance from her habits in other things. In a little while, Wilfrid stirred to enable himself to see Emily's face; it showed deep feeling. And indeed it was impossible ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... numbers of the great Jeremy rolled forth like the notes of an oratorio played on the violoncello. Mary sat gloating in the new sensation of racking physical discomfort that the wooden chair brought her. Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr's. Jeremy's minor chords soothed her like the music of a tom-tom. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... the United States, Paris and Italy. In 1870 she made her first appearanceatmessina, and after two successful seasons appeared in London in 1872 with the Royal Italian Opera. Later she abandoned opera for oratorio. and sang at all the principal festivals. She has made several tours of Canada and of the United States, and in 1886 sang at the opening of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London the ode written by Tennyson for the occasion. She frequently sang ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... consider the matter more seriously. He hastened to Berlin to his mother, and then returned to Leipsic, where he had charge of the famous Gewandhaus concerts. He settled down to work again, and especially to finish his oratorio of "St. Paul." In March, 1836, the University of Leipsic made him ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... pantomimes and Peter Pan, perhaps; perhaps, too, a play of Shakespeare, - a comedy, it may be, which made you laugh, or even a tragedy which made you want to cry, or at least left you sad. Some of you, too, have been to "Pageants," and some may even have been to an oratorio, which last may have been ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... is the mother-instinct for government? But now with clearer vision we reread the record of the past. True, we find no Raphael or Beethoven, no Phidias or Michael Angelo among women. No woman has painted the greatest picture, carved the finest statue, composed the noblest oratorio or opera. Not many women's names appear after Joan of Arc's in the long list of warriors; but, as a ruler, woman stands to-day the peer ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... evening in the oratorio season of 1771,' writes Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. 72), 'Mr. Johnson went with me to Covent Garden theatre. He sat surprisingly quiet, and I flattered myself that he was listening to the music. When we were got home he repeated ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Maria is making sunshine just now," and he declared that he had been exceedingly funny. He had in the course of the evening recited "near upon five hundred extempore macaronic verses; composed and executed an oratorio and opera" upon a piano without strings, namely the center-table; drawn "an entirely original view of Nantasket Beach"; made a temperance address; and given vent to "innumerable jests, jokes, puns, oddities, quiddities and nothings," interrupted by his own laughter and that of his ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... utterly refuse the proper impression of the sense that is conveyed by it; how the sons and daughters of the world may, with their every affection devoted to its perishable vanities, inhale all the delights of enthusiasm, as they sit in crowded assemblage, around the deep and solemn oratorio." "It is a very possible thing, that the moral and the rational and the active man, may have given no entrance into his bosom for any of the sentiments, and yet so overpowered may he be by the charm of vocal conveyance through which they are addressed to him, that he may ...
— On Singing and Music • Society of Friends
... great deal of information, but he had a hard life of persecution until he became a barber in Vienna. Here he blacked boots for an influential man, who became a friend to him. In 1798 this poor boy's oratorio, "The Creation," came upon the musical world like the rising of a new sun which never set. He was courted by princes and dined with kings and queens; his reputation was made; there was no more barbering, no more poverty. But of his eight ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... wires, connected with the vast buildings wherein instruments produce what sounds like fine choral singing as well as musical notes, enable the householder to turn on at pleasure music equal, I suppose, to the finest operatic performances or the grandest oratorio, and listen to it at leisure from the cushions of his own peristyle. This was a great though not wholly new delight to Eunane and most of her companions. For their sake only would Eveena ever have resorted to it, for though herself appreciating music not less highly, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... famous tenor, was a perfect master of all varieties and shades of vocal colour, and displayed his mastery with certainty and unfailing effect in the different fields of Oratorio and Opera. In the recitative "Deeper and deeper still," with its subsequent aria "Waft her, angels, through the skies" [Handel], he ranged through the entire gamut of tone-colour. As Edgardo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, he launched the "Maladetta" ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... sort—I shouldn't have stared at it if there had been danger. It is only sheet-lightning now. Now, will you have another piece? Something from an oratorio this time?' ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... perhaps to be above the average comprehension, but sources of delight and instruction to all musicians; the "Matthaeus Passion," for two choruses and two orchestras, one of the masterpieces in music, which was not produced till a century after it was written; the "Oratorio of the Nativity of Jesus Christ;" and a very large number of masses, anthems, cantatas, chorals, hymns, etc. These works, from their largeness and dignity of form, as also from their depth of musical science, have been to all succeeding composers an art-armory, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... produced by his free fancy the gems which our best artists are content to servilely copy—the sculptor who would sign works that now make the cities that possess them famous—the lapicido ("stone-cutter"), like that Agostino Fiorentino whose inimitable chisel produced the front of the oratorio of Saint Bernardino in this same Perugia—the goldsmith, the delicate fancy of whose handiwork puts to shame the coarser and heavier work of our time—the painter for whose presence at their courts princes were bidding against each other,—all these alike lived ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... have two violins (first and second), one clarinet, violoncello, oboe, and bassoon, the latter instrument giving the deep organ tones. There have been three services, and at one Sergeant Graves played an exquisite solo on the violin, "There is a green hill far away," from the oratorio of St. Paul. At another, Matijicek played Gounod's "Ave Maria" on the oboe, and last Sunday he gave us, on the clarinet, "Every valley shall be exalted." The choir proper consists of three sergeants and ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... noble form, they stand unapproachable in their perfection. For many reasons the English public refused to hear them in his own time, and Handel, as a general whose business was to win the battle, not in this or that way, but in any possible way, turned his attention to oratorio, and in this found success and a fortune. In this lies also our great gain, for in addition to the Italian opera songs we have the oratorio choruses. But when we come to think of it, might not Buononcini and Cuzzoni laugh to see how time has avenged them on their ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Fisk treated us to an excellent rendering of Haydn's great oratorio, 'The Creation.' Many came over from the city (Nashville),—whites from the "best families," all crowding in, listening, wondering, enjoying! How the music of those well-tuned instruments and voices caught us up and carried us away! Color-line melted and faded out. How we wished the politicians ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... If the art of today has made no progress in fugue, song, sonata, symphony, quartet, oratorio, opera [who has improved on Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert? Name! name! I say], what is the use of talking about "the average of today being higher"? How higher? You mean more people go to concerts, more people enjoy music than fifty or ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... gift that is freely given to us of God. It is no accident that all his letters close thus. This benediction is the last word of God's revelation to man, the brightness in the clear west, the last strain of the great oratorio. The last word or last book of Scripture is 'the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.' Let us take up the solemn Amen in our lips and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to say "imaginary meals," and hoped that next time she came, Hadria would not have an oratorio in course of composition. Miss Du Prel expressed a ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... silk dress on Sundays and held her chin a little higher than any other of the Cloverton ladies dared do. The Professor, no longer harrassed by debts, devoted less time to the drudgery of teaching and began the composition of an oratorio that he firmly believed would render his name famous. So, there being less to quarrel about, Beth's parents indulged more moderately in that pastime; but their natures were discordant, and harmony in the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... by the dress, gesticulation, and dancing of the pantomimus. How the various scenes were connected is uncertain; but it is almost a necessary inference that the connexion was provided by the chorus or, as in modern oratorio, by recitative. To us the mimetic posturing of the pantomimus appears an almost ridiculous substitute for drama; but the dancing of the actors seems to have been extraordinarily artistic and at times to have had a profound ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... performance of his Lent Oratorio, (1759) of the Messiah, nature exhausted, he dropt his head upon the keys of the organ he was playing upon, and with difficulty raised up again. He recovered his spirits, and went on with the performance until the whole was finished. He ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... many difficult questions arise. Shall the program consist of miscellaneous selections or of a connected work? If the latter, shall it be of the operatic type, involving action, scenery, and costumes, or shall it be of the cantata or oratorio type? And if the latter, shall heavy works like the Messiah and Elijah be given, or shall our efforts be confined to presenting the shorter and simpler modern works which are musically interesting and in the rendition of which the immature voices of adolescent boys ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... destitit ille, furiis agitatus iniquis.[1203] Et ecce (quod horribile dictu est) uenenatum et tumidum animal quod bufonem uocant uisum est reptans exire de inter femora mulieris. Quid plura? Terrefactus resiliit homo, et datis saltibus festinus oratorio exsilit. Ille confusus abscessit, et illa intacta remansit, magno quidem et Dei miraculo et merito Malachiae. Et pulchre operi foedo et abominando foedum interuenit et abominabile monstrum. Non prorsus aliter decuit bestialem extingui libidinem ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... of eternity, when the stars were young, her first grand oratorio burst upon raptured Deity, and thrilled the wondering angels; all heaven shouted; ten thousand times ten thousand jeweled harps, ten thousand times ten thousand angel tongues caught up the song; and ever since, through all the golden cycles, its breathing ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... 3d Nivose (24th December 1800) the first performance of Haydn's magnificent oratorio of the "Creation" took place at the opera, and the First Consul had expressed his intention of being present. I did not dine with him that day, but as he left me he said, "Bourrienne, you know I am going to the opera to-night, and you may go too; ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... discover him at the critical moment to be other than Sol, and mar her deliverance by her alarm. The still silence was anything but silence to him; he felt as if he were listening to the clanging chorus of an oratorio. And then he could fancy he heard words between Ethelberta and the viscount within the room; they were evidently at very close quarters, and dexterity must have been required of her. He went on tiptoe across the gravel to the grass, and once on that he strode in the direction whence he had come. ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... There is music, now, which lifts the hair on my head, I feel it so much, ... yet all I know of it as art, all I have heard of the works of the masters in it, has been the mere sign and suggestion, such as the private piano may give. I never heard an oratorio, for instance, in my life—judge by that! It is a guess, I make, at all the greatness and divinity ... feeling in it, though, distinctly and certainly, that a composer like Beethoven must stand above the divinest ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the climax of his empty successes. It had been Boston's first oratorio of the season, and the wreath had been an unusually ponderous one. It had met him promptly at the end of his first number, and it had impressed him as a curious bit of irony, following as it did upon the closing phrases of Spe modo ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... forms the third volume in the uniform series which already includes the now well known "Standard Operas" and the "Standard Oratorios." This latest work deals with a class of musical compositions, midway between the opera and the oratorio, which is growing rapidly in favor both with ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... need not tell any lover of Handel that his oratorio of "Israel in Egypt" contains a chorus familiarly known by this name. The words are—"And he gave them hailstones for rain; fire, mingled with the hail, ran along upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... took the image of St. Thome from one of the party, and placed it by the side of Nossa Senhora in his own oratorio, a little decorated box in which every family keeps its household gods, finally lighting a couple of wax candles before it. Shortly afterwards a cloth was laid on a mat, and all the guests were invited to supper. The fare was very scanty— a boiled fowl with rice, a slice of roasted pirarucu, farinha, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... gifts of elocution which made it a pleasure to listen to Dickens, whatever he read or whatever he said; nor had he that power of application by using which his rival taught himself with accuracy the exact effect to be given to every word. The rendering of a piece by Dickens was composed as an oratorio is composed, and was then studied by heart as music is studied. And the piece was all given by memory, without any looking at the notes or words. There was nothing of this with Thackeray. But the thing read was in itself of ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... She passed "long mornings" with them—the most dreary and serious of forenoons. She drove out solemnly in their great family coach with them, and Miss Wirt their governess, that raw-boned Vestal. They took her to the ancient concerts by way of a treat, and to the oratorio, and to St. Paul's to see the charity children, where in such terror was she of her friends, she almost did not dare be affected by the hymn the children sang. Their house was comfortable; their papa's table rich and handsome; their society solemn and genteel; their self-respect ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... accompanied the ladies back to the drawing-room. There was a grand piano in the front room, and to this Adela Branston went at Mr. Saltram's request, and began to play some of Handel's oratorio music, while he stood beside the piano, talking to her as she played. Mrs. Pallinson and Gilbert were thus left alone in the back room, and the lady did her best to improve the occasion by extorting what information she could from Mr. Fenton about ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... to more real contests; Handel has set up an oratorio against the opera @ind succeeds. He has hired all the goddesses from farces and the singers of Roast Beef(779) from between the acts at both theatres, with a man with one note in his voice, and a girl without ever an one; and so they sing, and make brave hallelujahs; and the good company encore ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... with his generation to produce much effect upon it. Original thought is much more common than is generally believed. Most people, if they only knew it, could write a good book or play, paint a good picture, compose a fine oratorio; but it takes an unusually able person to get the book well reviewed, persuade a manager to bring the play out, sell the picture, or compass the performance of the oratorio; indeed, the more vigorous and original any one of these things ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... great event of the season has been the performance of Mr. Paine's oratorio, "St. Peter," at Portland, June 3. This event is important, not only as the first appearance of an American oratorio, but also as the first direct proof we have had of the existence of creative musical genius in this country. For Mr. Paine's Mass in D—a work which was brought out with great ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... fond of music and reveled in the morning hour during which the organ was being played at Skibo. He was attracted by the oratorios as also Arthur Balfour. I remember they got tickets together for an oratorio at the Crystal Palace. Both are sane but philosophic, and not very far apart as philosophers, I understand; but some recent productions of Balfour send him far afield speculatively—a field which Morley never ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... churches of Europe for more than one thousand years. It was true congregational singing, in which all took part; simple and religious as the songs of Methodists, both to drive away fear and ennui, and fortify the soul by inspiring melodies,—not artistic music borrowed from the opera and oratorio, and sung by four people, in a distant loft, for the amusement of the rich pew-holders of a fashionable congregation, and calculated to make it forget the truths which the preacher has declared; but more like the hymns and anthems of the son of Jesse, when sung by the whole synagogue, making ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... excellence of this profit, we can't forget our loss in the absence of Mr. SANTLEY. BEN MIO DAVIES sang the tenor music, but apologised for having unfortunately got a pony on the event,—that is, he had got a little hoarse during the day. "BEN MIO" is—um—rather troppo operatico for the oratorio. Mr. BARNBY bravely batoned, as usual. Bravo, BARNBY! He goes on with the work because he likes it. Did he not, he would say with ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... undoubtedly exists between the arts of painting, poetry, music, and acting, it should be remembered that the first three are opposed to the last, in at least the one quality of permanence. The picture, oratorio, or book must bear the test of calculating criticism, whereas the work of an actor is fleeting: it not only dies with him, but, through his different moods, may vary from night to night. If the ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... was at that time on the committee, and agent for the "Friends to Music" who commissioned Beethoven to write an Oratorio in 1815. Schindler is of opinion that the repeated performance of the Abbe Stadler's heroic Oratorio, Die Befreiung von Jerusalem, was the cause of the Society in 1818 bespeaking, through Hauschka, "An oratorio ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... been as noble as their poetry, their sculpture, their architecture, possessed by the same exquisite sense of form and of proportion. One thing we can understand—how this musical form of the drama, which still remains to us in lower shapes, in the oratorio, in the opera, must have helped to raise their tragedies into that ideal sphere in which they all, like the "Antigone," live and move. So ideal and yet so human; nay rather, truly ideal, because truly human. The gods, the heroes, the kings, the princesses of Greek tragedy were dear ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... there was in Boston. To be sure, we could not pretend to compare with Boston in culture and in high and fine conversation, least of all in music, which was at a very low ebb with us. I remember being at an Oratorio in one of our churches, where the trump of Judgment was represented by a horn not much louder than a penny-whistle, blown in an obscure corner ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... this work, altering much of it and spoiling, what she altered. It is a pity that her new version, which is longer, heavier and more obscure, should have taken the place of the former one. In its first form Lelia is a work of rare beauty, but with the beauty of a poem or an oratorio. It is made of the stuff of which dreams are composed. It is a series of reveries, adapted to the soul of 1830. At every different epoch there is a certain frame of mind, and certain ideas are diffused in the air which we find alike in the works of the ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... oratorio with Dr. Hoffman. The boys were to attend the Christmas celebration at Allen Street church with the Deans. Hanny had not cared to go. Her mother kept watching her with a curious feeling as if she saw or suspected some change ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... into a kind of musical museum. He published in 1676 a pamphlet describing its contents. His name is associated with our subject in having adopted a new mode of stringing the Violono, or Double-Bass, by using four strings, and playing himself upon the instrument at oratorio performances in Rome. I have mentioned in Section I. that the Violono was originally used with several strings—five, six, or seven—and with frets. Todini is therefore credited with having introduced the method of stringing the Double Bass which led to the conversion of the old Violonos ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... by this visitor from Paris is in oratorio form and titled, appropriately, "The Promised Land." A huge choir of 400 voices, directed by Wallace Sabin and named in honor of the visitor, the "Saint-Saens Choir," rendered a good account of the ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... passionate scene in which the conscience-stricken Assur pours forth his soul in tempest. More thoroughly Italian in type is 'Mose in Egitto,' a curious though effective version of the Biblical story, which is still occasionally performed as an oratorio in this country, a proceeding which naturally gives little idea of its real merits. In 1833 it was actually given under the proper conditions, as a sacred opera, strengthened by a generous infusion of Handel's 'Israel in Egypt,' ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... things, miss, but I've never heard them." He had never been to concert or oratorio, any more than ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... oratory. Dramatized versions of biblical stories. Palestrina and harmonies of celestial Jerusalem. Religious dramas of Roswitha. Laura Guidiccioni's first oratorio text. Music by Cavalieri. At Santa Maria della Vallicella. Orchestra behind the scene. Description. Carissimi, "father of oratorio and cantata." Alessandro Scarlatti. Another Alessandro. Dr. Parry's ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... earliest biographer of Handel, and, on his authority, a host of subsequent writers, took upon them to assert, without any apparent foundation, that the oratorio of the Messiah was performed in London in the year 1741, previously to Handel's visit to Ireland; but that it met with a cold reception, and this was one cause of his leaving England. Dr Burney, when composing his History of Music, examined all the London newspapers where public amusements ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... spring of 1883 he began to compose music, and in 1885 we published together an album of minuets, gavottes, and fugues. This led to our writing Narcissus, which is an Oratorio Buffo in the Handelian manner—that is as nearly so as we could make it. It is a mistake to suppose that all Handel's oratorios are upon sacred subjects; some of them are secular. And not only so, but, whatever the subject, Handel was never at a loss in treating anything ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... Canal is situated the famous Troellhatta Falls, which are so remarkable as to attract visitors from all parts of Europe. These falls consist of a series of tremendous rapids extending over a distance of about two hundred yards, and producing an uproar almost equal to the ceaseless oratorio of Niagara. This angry water-way is interspersed by some well-wooded islands, on either side of which the waters rush with a wild, resistless power, tossed here and there by the many under-currents. The whole forms a succession ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... such an experiment possible. We are by no means anxious to assume the Puritanical tone, or to lay down the doctrine that certain subjects are to be excluded from any department of art. The most sacred themes are worked into oratorio-books, and the most straitlaced portion of the community applauds their combination with music. But when a subject is in itself solemn, let it be solemnly treated. Opinions may be divided as to whether the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... pieces of artillery thundered their message in an Oratorio of Death. The earth shook. Hills and rocks danced and reeled before the excited vision of the onrushing men. For two hours the guns roared and thundered without pause. The shriek of shell, the crash of ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... as though proceeding from cats in torment—an agonizing oratorio like nothing Janice had ever heard before. She screamed to the Swedish girl, but her voice was drowned by the caterwauling in the back kitchen. Olga wrenched open the door. Janice, arriving to look over her shoulder at the very moment she did so, saw ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... get on at the Oratorio? And what did Miss Wooler say to the proposal of being at the wedding? I have many points to discuss when I see you. I hope your mother and all are well. With kind remembrances to them, and true love to you,—I am, dear ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Made for music, the words alone hardly convey the full power of these hymns. They should be heard sung to the old chorales, massive, yet sweet, by the lusty voices of a German congregation. To English people they are probably best known through the verses introduced into the "Christmas Oratorio," where the old airs are given new beauty by Bach's marvellous harmonies. The tone of devotion, one feels, in Gerhardt and Bach is the same, immeasurably greater as is the genius of the composer; in both there is a profound joy in the Redemption begun by the Nativity, a robust faith joined ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... every man were not his own poet as truly as he is his own priest and governor, as though each were not entitled to see whatever is to be seen. The masters of thought may teach us better. They address their loftiest power in us, and never sing to oxen or dogs. The painting, poem, statue, oratorio, calls to me by name; the morning is an eye that solicits mine. Shall I take only the husks, and leave to another, contented, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... than five thousand five hundred years, this grand harbour of Rio lay hid in the hills, unknown by the Catholic Portuguese? Centuries ere Haydn performed before emperors and kings, these Organ Mountains played his Oratorio of the Creation, before the Creator himself. But nervous Haydn could not have endured that cannonading choir, since this composer of thunderbolts himself died at last through the crashing commotion ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... to be awed by the august spectacle—seemed almost to share in the devout contemplation and trancelike worship of the holy knights. Every thought of the stage had vanished—nothing was further from my own thoughts than play-acting. I was sitting as I should sit at an oratorio, in devout and rapt contemplation. Before my eyes had passed a symbolic vision of prayer and ecstasy, flooding the soul with overpowering thoughts of the divine sacrifice and ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... ringing of bells between hiding-place and hiding-place is the matrimonial oratorio, the discreet summons which every Jack issues to his Jill. The sequel to the concert may be guessed without further enquiry; but what it would be impossible to foresee is the strange finale of the wedding. Behold the father, in this case a real paterfamilias, in the noblest sense of the word, coming ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... oratorio by Handel (1749). The liberetto was by Charles Jennens, nicknamed "Soliman ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... forgotten; we know of the other because of the composer's name. Some years later, in 1784, he had another touch of the ways of men in the busy world, sent, perhaps, to reconcile him to his habitual seclusion. As far back as 1771 he had written his first oratorio—which I am not ashamed to say I have never looked at—Il Ritorno di Tobia. It was performed, apparently with eclat, by the Vienna Tonkuenstler Societaet, of which body Haydn wished to become a member. ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... tempest. The extraordinary choral effects produced in the performance of the Huguenots almost bewildered the hearers; and the wondrous lights and shades of sound given in many of the oratorios, are little behind the dramatic achievement. The aspect of Exeter Hall on an oratorio night is one of the grandest things in London. The vastness of the assemblage, the great mountain of performers, crested by the organ, and rising almost to the ceiling, are thoroughly impressive, while the first burst of the opening chorus is grand in the extreme. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various
... honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever." A few gifted voices of earth may possess such power and sweetness as almost to entrance us with their melody of song; but what an oratorio will it be, my brethren, when, released from the narrow limits of mortality, that sublime strain sung by the redeemed of all ages and ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands of angels, bursts ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... final touches to put to your oratorio, you'd better do them to-day. The piano won't be there to-morrow. I've made up my mind to ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... confirmed coffee drinker. These habits reflected themselves upon the poor, defenceless mucous membrane, whose function was perverted as shown in the constantly congested appearance of the respiratory tract. I have seen this artist with congested vocal cords rehearse an oratorio in the afternoon at a public rehearsal and sing the same work in the evening at the regular concert performance, when, to use his own words, "I feel as if every note will be my last. I have no grip on my voice." It was a clear case ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... the history of the University. The catalogue shows an enrollment of 475. There has been marked growth in the numbers in the Department of Music. Students begin to seek the University for instruction in this department alone. During the year the Mozart Society rendered the oratorio of "Elijah," both in the city and at the University, with ...
— American Missionary, August, 1888, (Vol. XLII, No. 8) • Various
... fitness for heaven if it would only send me there. I rather think, however, that St. Sylvester's will suit me better for a little while. His Reverence is going to look me up some pupils, and I have bought a Churchman's almanac, and am thinking about starting an oratorio instead of my opera. Wasn't it strange that when your letter came from Brenthill we should remember that an old friend of my mother's lived there? Judith and she have been writing to each other ever since. Clifton is evidently undergoing tortures with the man he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... a cross to-night. I had very much set my mind on going to the Oratorio. The Prince is to be there, and by all accounts it will be quite a grand sight, and there will be the finest music; but if my father does not wish me to go, much as I wish it, I will give it up with pleasure, if it be in my power, without a ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... she had little or no personal vanity, and the life of a public performer entailed a great deal which she already found herself disliking. Recently, too, her successful career had received a slight check. She had made her festival debut at Burstal in "Elijah," and no engagements for oratorio had followed upon it. Some day, while she was still young, she meant to retire, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... at church this afternoon, and the oratorio this evening. I must be off early in the morning, so let me make the most of precious time and come home with you tonight as I did before," answered Archie, making his best bow, and ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... day Lord Malden brought me a second letter. He assured me that the prince was most unhappy lest I should be offended at his conduct, and that he conjured me to go that night to the Oratorio, [38] where he would by some signal convince me that he was the writer of the letters, supposing I was still skeptical as to ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... Ottavio Rinuccini, author of "Dafne" and "Euridice," usually called the first operas. It was named the "Harmony of the Spheres," and its music was composed by Emilio del Cavaliere (originator of the modern oratorio) and the chapel master Cristoforo Malvezzi. The second intermezzo dealt with a contest in song between the daughters of Pierus and the muses. The judges were hamadryads and the defeated mortals were punished for their presumption. The text was by Rinuccini and the music by Luca Marenzio, ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... summer of enchanting weather as that particular summer in Wells. The whole population of Somersetshire, save those who had crops requiring rain, were in a heaven of delight from morning till night. Miss Tommy Tucker was very busy with some girl pupils, and as accompanist for oratorio practice; but there were blissful hours when she "studied" the cathedral with Fergus Appleton, watching him sketch the stately Central Tower, or the Lady Chapel, or the Chain Gate. There were afternoon walks to Tor Hill, winding up ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... unvarying tale of fiasco, and at last, in 1737, having lost the whole of his hardly earned money, Handel was compelled to close the theatre, and, worse than all, to suspend payment for a time. Happily he now turned his thoughts to oratorio. "Saul" and "Israel in Egypt" were composed in quick succession; the last gigantic work being written in the almost incredibly short space of twenty-seven days. How great it is everyone now knows, but, at the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... is both likely and promising; whereas there is no more hope in attempts to out-Wagner Wagner in music drama than there was in the old attempts—or for the matter of that, the new ones—to make Handel the starting point of a great school of oratorio. ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... 252-343,) who declares, from the zealous Al Jannabi, that to deny this journey, is to disbelieve the Koran. Yet the Koran without naming either heaven, or Jerusalem, or Mecca, has only dropped a mysterious hint: Laus illi qui transtulit servum suum ab oratorio Haram ad oratorium remotissimum, (Koran, c. 17, v. 1; in Maracci, tom. ii. p. 407; for Sale's version is more licentious.) A slender basis for the aerial structure ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... hummed perversely through his head, mixing themselves up with all things and rippling the air about him into their own large waves, bearing now and then upon them, like the insistent iteration of an oratorio chorus, fantastic fragments—"If Thou hadst been here!—If Thou hadst been here!" His fingers ached towards the responsive strings, and pulling out his watch, he made a hasty calculation. There should be good fifteen minutes, he decided—toilet allowed for—and ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... colossal achievements, such as the Passion according to St Matthew and the B Minor Mass (for discussion of which see ORATORIO and MASS), date from his cantorship at Leipzig. But, important and congenial as was his position there, and smooth as the course of his life seems to have been until his death in 1750, he must have had quite ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... deluge, I scarce ever saw a cloud afterwards. As the morning light stole through my open window in undimmed transparency, the robin, the blue-bird, the mocking-bird, the hosts of choral warblers, held their early oratorio in the patriarchal elms. If unskilled in music's science, they were unfettered by its laws, and hymned forth their wild and varied notes as though calling upon man to admire and adore the greatness and the goodness of ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... December, 1800, Napoleon, Josephine, and Hortense were going to the opera, to hear Haydn's Oratorio of the Creation. It was then to be performed for the first time. Napoleon, busily engaged in business, went reluctantly at the earnest solicitation of Josephine. Three gentlemen rode with Napoleon in his carriage. Josephine, ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... to explain the impassable gulf which, as I again perceived, yawned between my own vivid and imaginative conception of this work and the only living presentations of it which I had ever heard. But for the present my tormented spirits were cheered and calmed by hearing the classical Schneider's oratorio Absalom rendered as ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... earth is not already on record. Not to prove any position, but to check obstructive criticism, we refer to the divine who is said to have witnessed in magnificent apocalypse some closing scenes of the human drama. If he also heard in sublime oratorio a prelude of this widely extended glory, our vision may not be a "baseless fabric." After the quartettes of earth, and the interludes of angels, came the grand finale, when every creature which is in heaven, as ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... Henry was the second cavalier, when they went to an oratorio, and Meta's letter overflowed with the descriptions she had heard from him of Italian church music. He always went to Rome for Easter, and had been going as usual, this spring, but he lingered, and, for once, remained in England, where he ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... a favourite air with Hugh; and he placed himself so as to see the singer without being seen himself, and to lose no slightest modulation of her voice. But what was his disappointment to find that oratorio-music was just what Euphra was incapable of! No doubt she sang it quite correctly; but there was no religion in it. Not a single tone worshipped or rejoiced. The quality of sound necessary to express the feeling and thought of the composer ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... De Inventione Rhetorica, "On the Rhetorical Art;" intended to exhibit, in a compendious form, all that are most valuable in the works of the Grecian rhetoricians. 2. De Partitione Oratorio Dialogus, "A Dialogue on the several Divisions of Rhetoric," a sort of catechism of rhetoric. 3. De Oratore, "On the True Orator," a systematic work on the art of oratory. This is one of his most brilliant efforts, and ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... the splendid rivalry in liveries and outriders, and the immense quantity of gorgeous equipages—numbers with four horses—formed a scene which you can only witness in the mighty and aristocratic county of York. It beat a Drawing Room hollow, as much as an oratorio in York Minster does a concert in the Opera House. This delightful stay at York quite refreshed me, and I am not the ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... works belong to that class of minor compositions of which he was an unrivalled master. Barring a collection of Polish songs, two concertos, and a very small number of concerted pieces of chamber music, almost all his works are written for the pianoforte solo; the symphony, the oratorio, the opera, he ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... that he did not like to say he positively objected. He wished they had chosen an oratorio, or lecture, or anything more in keeping with the necessity ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... unlooked-for contingency. Evelyn announced her intention of going, as soon as I should be able to spare her, with a party of young friends, to hear a celebrated singer perform in an oratorio in the cathedral of an adjacent city, her specialty being vocal music, and her mourning permitting only sacred concerts. Her own highly-cultivated voice, it is true, had ill repaid the care that had been lavished on it, sharp and thin as it was by nature. I urged her to set forth at once, ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... place in 1886, a few months before the Master's death, was for the purpose of his being present at the performance of his Oratorio of St. Elizabeth (see Letter 370 and ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... principles are a sealed book. Handel's Israel in Egypt—the wonder of the scientific musician in his closet—yet sways to and fro, like a mighty wind upon the waters, the hearts of assembled thousands at an Exeter Hall oratorio. To take an instance more striking still, Beethoven, the sublime, the rugged, the austere, is also, as even Mons. Jullien could tell us, fast becoming a popular favourite. Now why is this? Simply because these master minds, under the ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... Handel again returns to the imitative style with wonderful effect, especially in the declaration of the basses, "The Floods stood upright as an Heap, and the Depths were congealed." The only tenor aria in the oratorio follows these choruses, a bravura song, "The Enemy said, I will pursue," and this is followed by the only soprano aria, "Thou didst blow with the Wind." Two short double choruses ("Who is like unto Thee, O Lord," and "The Earth swallowed them") lead to the duet for contralto and tenor, "Thou ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... Oratorio of Nineveh is performed again, with incidents in the life of JONAH, one of the features will be a magnificent wail in a minor key.—There is to be a banquet given to musical Dr. TURPIN. It was graceful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... this connection that there was a conflict among singers for many years as to whether the straight tone as cultivated by the English oratorio singers, or the vibrated tone of the Italians were correct. As usual, Nature won out. The correctly vibrated voice outlasted the other form of production, thus proving its lawful basis. But to-day the vibrato ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... practising sacred music in their lonely cottages. It is not uncommon to meet working men wandering over the wild hills, "where whip and heather grow," with their musical instruments, to take part in some village oratorio many miles away. "That reminds me," as tale-tellers say, of an incident among the hills, which was interesting, though far ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... the storm. From grim, black lips on the hill crest came the answer to their yell—three hundred and forty mighty guns were singing an oratorio of Death and Hell in chorus now from those heights. Half the men seemed to fall at a single crash and still the line closed up and rushed steadily on, firing and loading, firing and loading,—running and staggering, then rallying and pressing ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... professional avocations, it is impossible for me to give an opinion, especially with regard to the Indian Operetta; as soon as time permits, I will call on you for the purpose of discussing this subject, and also the Oratorio of "The Deluge." Pray always include me among the warm admirers of ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826, Volume 1 of 2 • Lady Wallace
... orchestral ricercari, 320 n.; Savonarola's opinion of the Church music of his time, ib.; musical aptitude of the people, 322; lack of a controlling element of correct taste, ib.; advent of Palestrina, ib.; the Congregation for the Reform of Music, 325; rise of the Oratorio, 334; music in England in the sixteenth century, 338; rise ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... drew the line of demarcation between permissible and forbidden evening amusements at the lecture-rooms of the Royal and Polytechnic Institutions, and the oratorio performances in Exeter Hall. All gates opening on the outer side of the boundary thus laid down, were gates of Vice—gates that no son of his should ever be allowed to pass. The domestic laws which ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... hundred persons, all of whom may see and hear, whether in the boxes, pit, or galleries. The arrangement was, to have oratorios kept distinct on certain mornings, and miscellaneous concerts on the evenings of other days. The concerts were crushers, but the first oratorio was decidedly a break down. The committee became alarmed; the expenses were enormous, and heavy liabilities stared them in the face. There was no time to be lost, and at the second oratorio, duly announced, there stood Paganini, in ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... warfare and his avoidance of the larger and more imposing forms of the opera, symphony, and oratorio, there were other causes which retarded the recognition of his transcendent genius. The unprecedented originality of his style, and the distinct national coloring of his compositions, did not meet with a sympathetic ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... one, because her mind was obsessed by the thought of opera. Oratorio had always been a hateful form of art to her. She had grown up thinking it old-fashioned, out-moded, absurdly "plum-puddingy," and British. In the realm of orchestral music she was more at home. She honestly loved orchestral music divorced from words. But the music of ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... of Carl Formes in oratorio was something to be long remembered. The Handel and Haydn Society brought out "Elijah" and "The Creation" before immense audiences at the Music Hall. For the first time we heard "Elijah" represented by a great artist, and not by a sentimental, mock-heroic singer. He infused into the performance ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... works of the famous German were merely so many paraphrased plagiarisms from the compositions of other men. He possessed a phenomenal memory. He seemed to remember every note in every opera, symphony, oratorio, or concerto that anybody ever mentioned, and there was not a piece of music by a celebrated man but he was ready to "prove" that it had been stolen from some ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... work,—preferring Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven. 5. A Choral and Organ Book,—"one of Marx's most interesting works." 6. "Nahib,"—a series of songs, the music of which "is gentle, tender, and full of Oriental feeling." 7. "John the Baptist," an oratorio,—twice performed by the University choir in one of the churches of Berlin. "A great charm is found in the peculiar sharpness of characterization which distinguishes this music. The solos and choruses, being held throughout in spirited declamation,—the music not being aggregated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... t'music aw think licks t'lump, especially abaght Haworth an' Keighley. Nah Haworth wunce hed a famous singer; he wor considered one o' t'best i' Yorkshire in his time. It is said 'at he once walked fra Haworth to York i' one day, an' sung at an Oratorio at neet. He hed one fault, an' that wor just same as all t'other Haworth celebrities; he wod talk owd fashioned, an' that willant dew up i' London. Bud we hed monny a good singer beside him i' t'neighbourhood. Nah what is thur grander ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... fulfilled. There is something very grand in the accumulation of titles, each greater than the preceding, and all culminating in that final 'Lord.' Handel has gloriously given the spirit of it in the crash of triumph with which that last word is pealed out in his oratorio. 'Saviour' means far more than the shepherds knew; for it declares the Child to be the deliverer from all evil, both of sin and sorrow, and the endower with all good, both of righteousness and blessedness. The 'Christ' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... no one could think or talk of anything else. Then the official accounts having been received from Washington, there were plans for a grand procession. An oratorio was given at the Stone Chapel in the morning. Madam Royall had managed to obtain seats for Mr. Winthrop and Doris with her party. The church was crowded. American and British officers in full uniform were ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... The Oratorio of Judith, Mr. Ireland observes, was written by Esquire William Huggins, honoured by the music of William de Fesch, aided by new painted scenery and magnifique decoration, and in the year 1733 brought upon the stage. As De Fesch[2] was a German and a genius, we may fairly ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... spring of 1883 he began to compose music, and in 1885 we published together an album of minuets, gavottes, and fugues. This led to our writing Narcissus, which is an Oratorio Buffo in the Handelian manner—that is as nearly so as we could make it. It is a mistake to suppose that all Handel's oratorios are upon sacred subjects; some of them are secular. And not only so, but, whatever the subject, Handel was never at a loss in treating anything that came into his ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... the English, have, among other dramas, called mysteries, frequently represented one entitled Las profecias des Daniel (prophecies of Daniel). No subject can be better adapted than this, for combining a splendid variety of pageantry in one oratorio, or sacred opera. The jubilee of adoration to the golden colossus of Bel, the flaming auto-de-fe for the refractory holy children; the voluptuous dance exhibited during the meal of Belshazzar; the sacrilegious use of the chalices of Jerusalem; the sudden wrath of Heaven; the gloom ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... the whisky-an'-soda, he was told off to swing the 'ammick in slow time, an' that massacritin' small-arm party went on with their oratorio. The Sergeant had been kindly excused from participating an' he was jumpin' round on the poop-ladder, stretchin' 'is leather neck to see the disgustin' exhibition an' cluckin' like a ash- hoist. A lot of us went on the fore an' aft bridge an' watched 'em like 'Listen to the Band in the Park.' All ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... Americans, at any rate. There is a sort of queer, absurd tradition. One begins to think of oratorio." ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... produced within six years, for the theatres of Italy and Sicily, not a note of which has survived. In 1803, Spontini went to Paris, in which capital again he produced some half-a-dozen operas and an oratorio,—all of which have perished. It would seem, however, as if there must have been something of grace in either Maestro or music, since Spontini was appointed music-director to the Empress Josephine; and it was owing to court interest that ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... One, who was ordering alike the embattled armies of earth and the starry hosts of the skies, and through history, as in nature, was sweeping on resistlessly to fulfill the good pleasure of His Will. No wonder the matchless oratorio of the Messiah opens with this aria, abruptly as the original words are spoken in Isaiah. They sound the key-note of the good tidings of great joy which, growing as a hope in men's souls through ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... discovered people go to hear music when they want to be soothed and uplifted. If they desire to be amused and enjoy a good laugh, they go to light opera or vaudeville; if they want a soothing, quieting mental refreshment, they attend a concert, opera or oratorio. Therefore I want to give them, when I sing, what they are in need of, what they are longing for. I want to have such control of myself that I shall be fitted to help and benefit every person in the audience who listens to me. Until I have thus prepared myself, I am not doing my whole duty to myself, ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... symphony appeared in 1801, his earlier symphonies, in what is called his first period, being written in the Mozart style. His only opera, "Fidelio," for which he wrote four overtures, was first brought out in Vienna in 1805; his oratorio, "Christ on the Mount of Olives," in 1812; and his colossal Ninth Symphony, with its choral setting of Schiller's "Ode to Joy," in 1824. In addition to his symphonies, his opera, oratorios, and masses, and the immortal group of sonatas for the piano, which were almost revelations ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... In ecclesia vel oratorio nunquam sedere sibi complacuit super sedile, aut huc illuc ve, ut moris est mundanorum, deambulare: sed nudato semper capite, dum divina saltem celebrarentur officia, rarissime regios erigens artus, quasi continue coram libro genua flectens, oculis ac manibus erectis, missalia, oracula, epistolas, ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... in the shining cloud of a witty abstraction when cornered. His prose is full of winged neologisms, his poetry heavy with the metaphysics of ennui. Remy de Gourmont speaks of his magnificent work as the prelude to an oratorio achieved in silence. Laforgue, himself, called it an intermezzo, and in truth it is little more. His intellectual sensibility and his elemental soul make for mystifications. As if he knew the frailness of his tenure on life, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... made them conductors of his electricity, so it was easy to observe what efforts nature was making, through so many hoarse, wooden, and imperfect persons, to produce beautiful voices, fluid and soul-guided men and women. The genius of nature was paramount at the oratorio. ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... performed, and when Chopin arrived there twenty-five years afterwards, Elsner was still remembered by Lesueur, who said: "Et que fait notre bon Elsner? Racontez-moi de ses nouvelles." Elsner was a very productive composer: besides symphonies, quartets, cantatas, masses, an oratorio, &c., he composed twenty-seven Polish operas. Many of these works were published, some in Warsaw, some in various German towns, some even in Paris. But his activity as a teacher, conductor, and organiser was perhaps even more beneficial ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... number, opus; sonata; rondo, rondeau[Fr]; pastorale, cavatina[obs3], roulade[obs3], fantasia, concerto, overture, symphony, variations, cadenza; cadence; fugue, canon, quodlibet, serenade, notturno [Italian], dithyramb; opera, operetta; oratorio; composition, movement; stave; passamezzo [obs3][Italian], toccata, Vorspiel [German]. instrumental music; full score; minstrelsy, tweedledum and tweedledee, band, orchestra; concerted piece[Fr], potpourri, capriccio. vocal music, vocalism[obs3]; chaunt, chant; psalm, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... affirmed by Walafred Strabo about 842, and by a monk of St. Gall, placed by Basnage about 884. The earliest instance where the word capella is used for the vestment of St. Martin appears to be in a "Placitum" of Theodoric, King of France, who ascended the throne A.D. 672—"in oratorio nostro super capella Domini Martini ... haec dibiret conjurare." In a second "Placitum," also quoted by Ducange, of Childebert, King of France (circa 695), the word capella seems to mean a sacred building—"in oratorio suo seu capella Sancti Marthini." And ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... Shaw's works, and it is perhaps unnecessary to say that the effect on the packed audience was overwhelming. It was "briefly discussed" by a number of speakers, but they seemed as out of place as a debate after an oratorio. ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... and ample accommodations of vestibule and hall, the latter opening on a balcony, where we could hear the chanting of priests in a church close by. Browning told us that this was the first church where an oratorio had ever been performed. He came into the anteroom to greet us, as did his little boy, Robert, whom they call Pennini for fondness. The latter cognomen is a diminutive of Apennino, which was bestowed ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his compositions to a height unattained by any of his successors. He was one of the most extraordinary geniuses that ever appeared on earth. Handel, whose glorious melodies entranced the senses, produced the grand oratorio of the "Messiah," which is still performed in both Protestant and Catholic cathedrals; and Graun, with whom Frederick the Great played the flute, brought private singing into vogue by his musical compositions. ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... the bill, we all gave up butter, selling the entire product of the dairy for three months to make up the deficit. That was just like Brook Farm. The most ambitious performance in my time was the rendition of the Oratorio of Saint Paul, which was given twice by request, but this was in the summer when we had ample room and verge enough in ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... the next half hour, when suddenly Grantly and Mary whirled into the room in a state of such excited indignation as took their mother quite five minutes to discover what all the fuss was about. When at last they had been induced to tell their story separately, and not in a chorus almost oratorio-like in its confusion, Mrs Ffolliot discovered to her dismay that they were accused of meddling with a shilling which their father had placed on the book-club collecting card, ready for the collector ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... Papal throne, painted after his death) fascinated their attention. The Brownings found it dazzling to enter this interior, all gold and color, with the most resplendent decorative effects. They followed in the footsteps of Saint Catherine, as do all pilgrims to Siena, and climbed the hill to the Oratorio di Santa Caterina in Fontebranda, and read that inscription: "Here she stood and touched that precious vessel and gift of God, blessed Catherine, who in her life did so many miracles." They lingered, too, in the Cappella Santa Caterina in San Domenico, where ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... especially his fourth sermon on 'The Messiah' in the series suggested by Handel's Oratorio. There is not a taint of irreverence, but no one but a man who had an exquisite sense of humour could have written the first ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... we were absent. I thought I had lost my childish fondness for circuses, but it came back redoubled; and Kate may contradict me if she chooses, but I am sure she never looked forward to the Easter Oratorio with half the pleasure she did to this "caravan," as most ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... consuetudinem vitiosam et corruptam pura et incorrupta consuetudine emendat. Itaque cum ad hanc elegantiam verborum Latinorum, quae etiam si orator non sis, et sis ingenuus civis Romanus, tamen necessaria est, adjungit illa oratorio, ornamenta dicendi; tum videtur tanquam tabulas bene pictas collocare in bono lumine. Hanc cum habeat praecipuam laudem in communibus, non video cui debeat cedere. Splendidam quamdam, minimeque veteratoriam rationem dicendi tenet, voce, motu: forma etiam magnifica, et generosa quodammodo. ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... She listened wistfully a moment to the now slightly dulled oratorio, then: "Yes, Angus McDonald is his name; but there are two kinds of Scotch, and Angus is the other kind. Of course he's one of the big millionaires now, with money enough to blind any kind of a Scotchman, but he was the other kind even when he ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... from him," said Goethe, "in which he complains that the performance of the oratorio of the Messiah was spoiled for him by one of his female scholars, who sang an aria too weakly and sentimentally. Weakness is a characteristic of our age. My hypothesis is, that it is a consequence of the efforts made in Germany to get rid of the French. Painters, natural philosophers, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... much an opera, monsieur," said she, "as an oratorio—a work which is in fact not unlike a most magnificent edifice, and I shall with pleasure be your guide. Believe me, it will not be too much to give all your mind to our great Rossini, for you need to be at once a poet and a musician to appreciate ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... depopulated, and Cursitor-street be left to the fowls of the air; locks would fall 50 per cent, and Mr. Bramah might betake himself to Van Dieman's Land. What a pleasant thing would a public dinner be; for, instead of a gentleman in a dress coat singing as from the orchestra of an oratorio, he would throw a more impassioned energy into his own compositions than he could possibly impart to those of another, and proportionally enhance the delight of his company. All the mechanism of professional singing would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... the rain ceased, the clouds passed away, and the sun shone again, giving us a rainbow promise on the passing drops. Everything woke up! The birds were first to rejoice, and a veritable oratorio of praise and joyfulness sounded about our ears. The leaves quickly expanded, fresher than ever; the flowers uncurled and unfolded, the May-apple umbrellas raised again; and all seemed singing a song as joyous as that of the birds, though audible ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... the Strand at past one in the morning, Lady Hertford, Lady Powis, Mrs. Howe, and I, set out to see it, and were within an inch of seeing the Adelphi buildings burnt to the ground. I was to have gone to the Oratorio next night for Miss Linley's sake, but, being engaged to the French ambassador's ball afterwards, I thought I was not quite Hercules enough for so many ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... "Oh, no! He is out of favor there. They have never forgiven him his description of the Kaiser's oratorio as 'Moses Among the Crocodiles.' That is why I thought he might not be averse to looking in our direction. He used to be a nice boy; he is handsome according to his portraits, and Charlotte is not without her ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... the inferior singers in making up a general chorus is not always appreciated. In an artificial musical composition, as in an oratorio or an anthem, though there is a leading part, which is commonly the air, that gives character to the whole, yet this principal part would often be a very indifferent piece of melody, if performed without its accompaniments. These accompaniments by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... me, at Paris, in 1835, a picture of "The Oratorio,"—a subject well known from Hogarth's etching. He told me that he bought it at a broker's shop in the Rue St. Denis; that, on examination, he found the frame to be English; and that, as the price was small—thirty francs, if I remember rightly—he bought the piece, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... 'generalissimo', 'gondola', 'gonfalon', 'grotto', ('grotta' is the earliest form in which we have it in English), 'gusto', 'harlequin'{18}, 'imbroglio', 'inamorato', 'influenza', 'lava', 'malaria', 'manifesto', 'masquerade' ('mascarata' in Hacket), 'motto', 'nuncio', 'opera', 'oratorio', 'pantaloon', 'parapet', 'pedantry', 'pianoforte', 'piazza', 'portico', 'proviso', 'regatta', 'ruffian', 'scaramouch', 'sequin', 'seraglio', 'sirocco', 'sonnet', 'stanza', 'stiletto', 'stucco', 'studio', 'terra-cotta', 'umbrella', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... a band of harmless savages, the stun of the surge on your right ear, the hiss of the surf, the saturnalia of the elements; while overpowering all other sounds are the orchestral harmonics of the sea, which roll on through the ages, all shells, all winds, all caverns, all billows heard in "the oratorio of the creation." ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... there are any final touches to put to your oratorio, you'd better do them to-day. The piano won't be there to-morrow. I've made up my mind to ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... of letters for this purpose, the assassins made the best of their way toward Rome; and being arrived there, they learned that on the morrow, at five in the evening, Stradella was to give an oratorio in the church of San Giovanni Laterano. They failed not to be present at the performance, and had concerted to follow Stradella and his mistress out of the church, and, seizing a convenient opportunity, to make the blow. The performance was now begun, and these ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... "75" battery continues its barking a hundred yards behind us—the sharp anvil-blows of a huge hammer, followed by a dizzy scream of force and fury—a gigantic gurgling dominates the devilish oratorio; that, also, is coming from our side. "It's a ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse |
