"Oratorio" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 one ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... (op. 109-ll?) are perhaps the best, but also the last, music that I composed for the pianoforte. It is and always will be an unsatisfactory instrument. I shall hereafter follow the example of my grandmaster Handel, and every year write only an oratorio and a concerto for some string or wind instrument, provided I shall have finished my tenth symphony (C ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... 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 De ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... 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 ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... came back with 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 ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 sell it ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... 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 to hear that voice and remain unmoved; its sweetness, its force, ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... 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 ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... of Christmas Eve they went, by her desire, to a church in Soho, where the Christmas Oratorio was being given; and coming away passed, by chance of a wrong turning, down Borrow Street. Ugh! How that startled moment, when the girl had pressed herself against him in the dark, and her terror-stricken whisper: "Oh! Who is it?" leaped ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... did, a form in which dullards may compose until the world is sick, then the wiseacre is right But the inventors and perfecters of forms have not always wrought an unmitigated good. If Haydn left a fruitful monument in the symphony, and Handel in his particular form of oratorio, and if we thankfully praise Haydn and Handel for these their benefits, must we not also blame Haydn for the dull symphonies that nearly drove Schumann and Wagner mad, and Handel for the countless copies of his oratorios that rendered stupid, dull, and ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... of character between the two women Anah and Aholibamah and by keeping of course the Deluge as a purely instrumental piece for the denouement. If in your free moments you could think of cutting out of this an oratorio of moderate length, as in Byron, I should be ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... parce et tibi ipsi." Non 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 ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... 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, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Melba, and Schumann-Heink. He may not be able to rise above the plane of ragtime, or he may attain to the sublime plane of "The Dead March in Saul." He has access to all the music from the discordant hand organ to the oratorio and grand opera. In his introduction of a concert company, the chairman said: "Ladies and gentlemen, the artists who are to favor us this evening will render nothing but high-grade selections. If any of you are inclined to be critical and to say that their music is above your heads, I beg to ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... blessing. Extol that love, all painting, all sculpture, all music, all architecture, all worship! In Dresdenian gallery let Raphael hold Him up as a child, and in Antwerp Cathedral let Rubens hand Him down from the cross as a martyr, and Handel make all his oratorio vibrate around that one chord—"He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquity." But not until all the redeemed get home, and from the countenances of all the piled-up galleries of the ransomed shall be revealed the wonders of redemption, shall either man or seraph ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... 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. ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... misunderstood her 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 fiery ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... 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 only to the nerves ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... and music; Pinafore instead of an Oratorio. I like Scott, Burns, Byron, Longfellow, especially Shakespeare, etc., etc. Of songs, the Star-Spangled Banner, America, Marseillaise, and all moral and soul-stirring songs, but wishy-washy hymns are my detestation. I greatly enjoy nature, especially fine weather, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... I heard the minister pray at Mrs. Blake's funeral, and once since at the Larkums. I have longed to hear him again. I never heard anything like it in my life. It reminded me of a beautiful poem or oratorio." ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... my life in a community where, during the last twenty-five years, there has been a great change in musical taste. George Peabody left money to found a Conservatory of Music, and a few music lovers spent time and money to keep alive an Oratorio Society. Later, the visits of Thomas' Orchestra and of the Boston Symphony Orchestra added to the strength of these local musical centres; but for many years the Peabody Conservatory was ridiculed and misunderstood, and the Oratorio Society was usually in financial ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... 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 falling trees, the showers of flying rocks ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... 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 least fatigued ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... house of a friend "where 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 ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... 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 of falls of which the first is ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... more real contests; Handel has set up an Oratorio against the Operas, and succeeds. He has hired all the goddesses from farces and the singers of Roast Beef[1] 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, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... that 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 performance be indifferent it is no consolation for ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... of Fenelon: "The poet should take only the flower of each object, and never touch but what can be beautified." In a critique of Alfred de Musset he speaks of the youthful poems of Milton: "'Il Penseroso' is the masterpiece of meditative and contemplative poetry; it is like a magnificent oratorio in which prayer ascends slowly toward the Eternal. I make no comparison; let us never take august names from their sphere. All that is beautiful in Milton stands by itself; one feels the tranquil habit ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... kindly-disposed towards all boy-kind. While he was questioning his young visitor, the organ of Grace Church, which was next to the bishop's house, pealed forth, and a man's voice began to chant a selection from an oratorio Bud had learned at St. Mark's. A high, childish soprano voice was essaying to carry the sustained note an octave above the ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... aiding their efforts, for though I arrived in a 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 his Maker, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... 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 ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... choruses."—I 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... 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 ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... Ethelberta should 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 ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... music 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, ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... people 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
... 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 ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... abhorrence of musical 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 appreciation in Germany and Vienna, when he first ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... 1. 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 ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... 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 of the thunder; ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... the "Madonna di San Sisto" were only daubs offensive to the eye; others who, having seen Macready in Macbeth, find the tragedy stale in others' hands. Now I don't believe this ensues where the love of the art itself is genuine; and I rejoice to say that having once listened to an oratorio at the Handel Festival with four thousand selected performers, that oratorio becomes forever a source of exquisite enjoyment, performed where or how it may be. If poorly done, the mind floats up toward the region, if it does not attain quite the same height, where it soared at the perfect recital; ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... sweet 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 ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... than those of the 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 well as on the earth, was heard ascribing "Blessing ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... seemed 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 the mystery ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... 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 painter in soul-godhead, and nearest to the true poet, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... and 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... with the traditions of different schools of composition and performance is necessary also in order not to sing the songs of Bach and Handel like those of Schubert and Schumann, or Brahms like the modern French composers; in order not to interpret with like effects indiscriminately songs of the oratorio and opera, of Italian, German, French, English and ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... Hauschka 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 of ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... 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 obliged Zack to be home every ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... 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 to the development of the musical ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the Italians for their inability to cultivate the higher kinds of music. We were 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, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... even Americans, at any rate. There is a sort of queer, absurd tradition. One begins to think of oratorio." ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... 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
... right!" 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 first come out to ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... when they suppose a man to be going down in the world, feel their respect for him sensibly decaying, and think it wise to trample him under foot, provided only in that act of trampling they can squeeze out of him their own individual debt. Like that terrific chorus in Spohr's oratorio of St. Paul, " Stone him to death " is the cry of the selfish and the illiberal amongst creditors, alike towards the just and ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 an ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... "Except!" Dr. Warton exclaims, "Is not this a high sort of poetry?" He mentions, likewise, that Congreve's opera, or oratorio, of Semele, was set to musick by Handel; I believe, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... 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 ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... of summary of what we all said, and no one in particular is responsible for it; and in this it is like public opinion. The Parson, however, whose only experience of the theatre was the endurance of an oratorio once, was very cordial in his denunciation of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... William Jackson, author of 'The Deliverance of Israel,' an oratorio which has been successfully performed in the principal towns of his native county of York, furnishes an interesting illustration of the triumph of perseverance over difficulties in the pursuit of musical science. He was the son of a miller at Masham, a little town situated in the valley of ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... 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 ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... genera and species—if we consider the divisions into vocal, instrumental, and mixed; and their subdivisions into music for different voices and different instruments—if we observe the many forms of sacred music, from the simple hymn, the chant, the canon, motet, anthem, &c., up to the oratorio; and the still more numerous forms of secular music, from the ballad up to the serenata, from the instrumental solo up to the symphony. Again, the same truth is seen on comparing any one sample of aboriginal music with a ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... 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 was lacking: the palace of sound ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... and hut confronted, In battleship and iron steed defying space, In flaring furnace of the smelted ore, In haunts of coal and steam below the whirling wheels, Life laughs and sings and thunders An oratorio merging all the powers of harmony, And hails the high-born Thief, ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... 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 story of the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... 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, he sought azure and elliptical routes. He would ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... 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 ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... Chopin! Beethoven tried to tell 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 put together." ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... speaketh in the penetralia of the spirit is mute; and what else can be the result, but, in place of the song of lark, or linnet, or nightingale, at the best a concert of mocking-birds, at the worst an oratorio ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... 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 the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... (for the name itself conveys nothing, for which reason Wagner coined the term "music drama") broke away from the church in the guise of Mysteries, as they were called in mediaeval times. A Mystery (of which our modern oratorio is the direct descendant) was a kind of drama illustrating some sacred subject, and the earliest specimens laid the foundation for the Greek tragedy and comedy. We still see a relic of this primitive art form in the ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... 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 ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... can be more disgusting than an oratorio. How absurd to see five hundred people fiddling like madmen about the Israelites in the ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... 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
... in Dean Street, Soho.—The Oratorio of Judas Maccabeus was performed here in great splendour in 1760. It was afterwards the auction room of the elder Christie; and is now "Caldwell's Dancing Academy." George III. frequently honoured ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... Montreal, at the age of seven, and afterwards studied in 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. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... angel,' said Gambardella after a moment. 'I hear that he composes good music himself, and that his new oratorio will be performed before the Doge in ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... staircase 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 upon him at his first ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... one Concert and one Oratorio; {198} and on Thursday went to Yarmouth, which I took a great fancy to. The sands were very good, I assure you; and then when one is weary of the sea, there is the good old town to fall back on. There is Mr. Gooch the ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... hastened with song and instrument to praise the life, death, and triumph of the Christ. No human composition ever voiced, in poetry or prose or music, such a masterly conception of the Virgin's Son as that uttered by this magnificent oratorio. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... without Devrient's co-operation nothing of the sort can be undertaken in Carlsruhe. If the Tonkunstler-Versammlung takes place not out of the theater season, then one or more theatrical performances can be given in conjunction with it, especially of Gluck's Operas; as also an ultra-classical Oratorio of Handel's might well be given over to ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... is enriched by every new shape in which its meaning can appear. If, therefore, poetry is to keep time with the slow movement of the music and conform to its mode of development, the verses have to be repeated again and again; but this destroys the poetic form—as in the oratorio, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... a difficult 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 ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... her head. "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
... affection—it should be paternal and nothing more. He would bid adieu to all that folly, and his life should not be a whit the emptier for the loss. He would fill it with interests—all kinds of interests, and his music should be the first. He would take up again, and carry out to the end, that oratorio which he had turned over in his mind for years—the "Absalom." He had several numbers at his fingers' ends; he would work out the bass solo, "Oh, Absalom, my son, my son!" and the double chorus that followed it, "Make ready, ye mighty; ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Oratorio. By Joseph L. Roeckel; the text compiled by Mrs. Alexander Roberts from Ephesians vi.; interspersed with hymns from several sources.—A useful work for services of song or chapel festivities. There is a sameness ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... 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
... 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, always, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... 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
... possible to forget outsiders. So, that day everything went on just as usual, Margaret putting her heart into the prayer, the simple, storylike reading of the Scripture, and the other story-sermon which followed it. Gardley sang unusually well at the close, a wonderful bit from an oratorio that he and Margaret ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... over, and I am not alone in this view. Such men as Mr. Dexter and 'Unmarried' are the cause why half of us women prefer to remain single; the former may deny it, poker in hand, but murder will out. In conclusion, let me add that I have never written an oratorio in my life, though ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Luscombe showed 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... during the festivities in 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 died ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... one,—at the way it was performed. In the Ode (IV. 6), which seems to have been a kind of prelude to the "Secular Hymn," he anticipates that the virgins who chanted it will on their marriage-day be proud to recall the fact that they had taken part in this oratorio under ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... 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 as much experience as can have been good for him. He was often ruffled ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... 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
... Politics and religion hardly surpassed it in the power of creating cabals and sects and in stirring up animosities. This was specially marked in music. The great Handel, who had not then found his true vocation as an oratorio composer, was in the culmination of his power as manager of the opera, though he was irritated by hostile factions. The musical quarrels of the time were almost as interesting as the Gluck-Piccini war in Paris in the latter part of the same century, and the literati took part in it with ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... now-and-then smile or word or two, while Rahal and Barbara talked, and Ian played charmingly—with soft pedal down—quotations from Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony" and "Hark, 'Tis the Linnet!" from the oratorio, "Joshua." ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... 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 ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... dissolved in melody,[3] raised music by 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. Gluck was the first composer who introduced the depth and pathos ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... lest it should run away with them, and they neglect the rubrics, Dr. Newman was sensitive over musicians of the day setting to work upon liturgy. Of sorts of liberty taken we have modern examples in Gounod's Mors et Vita Oratorio, where O felix culpa, &c., is planted in the middle of the Dies Irae, and in his Messe Solennelle, where Domine, non sum dignus, &c., figures as a solo in the Agnus Dei (a less objectionable case, the ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... 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 ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... attached to a Mr. Sheridan, a young man of great talents, and very well spoken of, whom it is expected she will speedily marry. She has performed this Lent at the Oratorio of Drury-lane, under Mr. Stanley's direction. The applause and admiration she has met with, can only be compared to what is given Mr. Garrick. The whole town seems distracted about her. Every other diversion is forsaken. Miss Linley ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Whitsuntide the Lower Rhenish Music Festival was held. Handel's "Deborah," Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, and part of Beethoven's Ninth were on the programme, and the baton was in the hand of Ferdinand Ries. Hiller, who had written additional accompaniments to the oratorio and translated the English words into German, had received an invitation from the committee, and easily persuaded Chopin to accompany him. But this plan very nearly came to naught. While they were making preparations for the journey, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... 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 ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... 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 had only ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... had the wisdom to follow Mme. Viardot's excellent example. The great Jenny Lind, long after her voice had lost its quality, continued to sing in oratorio and concert. So did Adelina Patti. Muriel Starr once told me of a parrot she encountered in Australia. The poor bird had arrived at the noble age of 117 and was entirely bereft of feathers. Flapping his stumpy wings he cried incessantly, "I'll fly, by ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... her 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 ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... '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', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... absurdities; and by Gagnier (tom. i. p. 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
... 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, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... who is the prettiest creature upon earth. Mrs. Hartley I find still handsomer, and Miss Linley is to be the superlative degree. The king admires the last, and ogles her as much as he dares in so holy a place as an oratorio, and at so devout ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... young scholar had mastered the most difficult problems of counterpoint, and was dismissed by his teacher as perfectly competent in his art. How highly Wagner esteemed him is shown by the fact that his "Liebesmahl der Apostel," his only work in the nature of an oratorio, is dedicated to "Frau Charlotte Weinlig, the widow of my never-to-be-forgotten teacher." During this time he also composed a sonata and a polonaise, both of which were free from bombast and simple and natural in their musical form. More important than all, Wagner now began ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... 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 ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... The first oratorio performed in London, was at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, in 1732. On June 10, in the same year, the serenata of Acis and Galatea was performed at the Italian Opera House, in English, by Italian performers, with scenery representing a rural prospect, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... integrate each other—that, finally, when reviewed, make up a total drama, of which each writer's separate share would have been utterly imperfect without corresponding parts that he could not have foreseen. At length all is finished. A profound piece of music, a vast oratorio, perfect and of elaborate unity, has resulted from a long succession of strains, each for itself fragmentary. On such a final creation resulting from such a distraction of parts, it is indispensable to suppose an overruling ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... oratorio, but it is a drama all the same. What more dramatic, for instance, than what you have just sung, and all that goes before? Now suppose we go on. ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Only, do you remember what some French novelist once said?—"A poet's sweetest poem is always the one he has never been able to compose." I often think that's true of music, too. Away up in the higher stories of one's brain somewhere, there's a tune floating about, or rather a whole oratorio full of them, that one can never catch and fix upon ruled paper. The idea's there, such a beautiful and vague idea, so familiar to one, but so utterly unrealisable on any known instrument—a sort of musical Ariel, flitting before one and tantalising one for ever, but never allowing ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... 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 ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... 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 ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Bernard 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
... the Court theatre is utterly 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. He put down his name, and paid his ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... whirl of fury Baroni informed him that he was exactly suited to be a third-rate music-hall artiste—the young man, be it said, was making a special study of oratorio—and that it was profanation, for any one with so incalculably little idea of the very first principles of art to attempt to interpret the works of the great masters, together with much more of a like explosive ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... singing;—we were this evening carried to a well-known conservatory called the Mendicanti, who performed an oratorio in the church with great, and I dare say deserved applause. It was difficult for me to persuade myself that all the performers were women, till, watching carefully, our eyes convinced us, as they were but slightly grated. The sight of girls, however, handling the double ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... strains in this great oratorio are the tributes of women voicing their love and gratitude. They come from those in all the walks of life, and a distinguishing feature is that they who have known her longest and best are most loyal and devoted. The secret of this is ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... she made her first appearance in a new oratorio. Her songs proved a principal feature in ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... 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 ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... reached the town of Harper's Ferry on June 5, 1858. The magnificent view which greeted his vision as he stepped from the train took his breath. The music of trembling waters seemed a grand accompaniment to an Oratorio of Nature. ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... people, but 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 ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... Albrechtsberger. His first 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 ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... unconquerable confidence in the Just and Holy 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 centuries, became ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... basement Mr. Wenck was standing with a printed copy of Handel's sacred oratorio of The Messiah in his hand. Evidently he was waiting for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... 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, ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... tempore fuerint imperatorum illorum satellites, Inglini Bipenniferi Niceta Choniata, Barangi Curopoata dicti. Qui vbique Imperatorem prosequebantur ferentes humeris secures, quas tollebant, cum Imperator ex oratorio spectandum se exhibebat Anglice vitam diuturnam secures suas ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... 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 ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... the city, and the French ships-of-war in the harbor. On the twenty-seventh he had a busy day. In his diary he recorded: "At ten o'clock in the morning received the visits of the clergy of the town. At eleven, went to an oratorio; and between that and three o'clock received the addresses of the governor and council of the town of Boston[22]—of the president, et cetera, of Harvard college, and of the Cincinnati of the state; after ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... 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 ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... "Sappho" in 1851, a popular comic opera "Le Medecin malgre lui" in 1858, and a year later his famous setting of "Faust," which placed him in the front rank of composers; other operas followed, with various masses, anthems, hymns, &c.; his oratorio "Redemption," perhaps his masterpiece, appeared ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... from home to act as errand boy for a music teacher. He absorbed a 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 hundred compositions, "The Creation" eclipsed them ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... C. M. F. Quintiliani de institutione oratorio, liber primus (Paris, 1890). Introduction, xiv-xxxii. M. Fierville prints for the first time the complete texts of these ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... 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 |
