A History of the Oratorio: Vol. 4: The Oratorio in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

A History of the Oratorio

A History of the Oratorio

VOLUME 4

THE ORATORIO IN THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES

Howard E. Smither

The University of North Carolina Press

Chapel Hill and London

© 2000 The University of North Carolina Press

All rights reserved

Music examples by Evan Conlee

Manufactured in the United States of America

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

(Revised for volume 4)

Smither, Howard E.

A history of the oratorio.

Includes bibliographies and indexes.

Contents: v. 1. The oratorio in the baroque era: Italy, Vienna,

Paris.—v. 2. The oratorio in the baroque era: Protestant Germany

and England.—v. 3. The oratorio in the classical era.—v. 4. The

oratorio in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 1. Oratorio.

I. Title.

ML3201.56 782.8′2′09 76-43980

ISBN 0-8078-1274-9 (v. 1)

ISBN 0-8078-1294-3 (v. 2)

ISBN 0-8078-1731-7 (v. 3)

ISBN 0-8078-2511-5 (v. 4)

04 03 02 01 00 5 4 3 2 1

To Ann

Nirvana is seeing one thing through to the end.

—Shunryu Suzuki Roshi on Zen practice

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

PART I. The Nineteenth Century

Chapter I. The German Oratorio: Terminology, Social and Cultural Context

Terminology

Cultural and Social Context

German Cultural Nationalism and Oratorio

Romanticism and German Oratorio

Historicism and German Oratorio

The Handel Revival

The Bach Revival

Religion and Oratorio

Secularization

Gefühlsreligion and Kunstreligion

Liturgical Reform and Church Music

The Context of Oratorio Performance

Oratorio and the Amateur Choral Society

Oratorio and the Music Festival

Oratorio in Church

Oratorio on Stage

Chapter II. The German Oratorio: Aesthetic Theory and Criticism, Libretto and Music

Introduction: The Oratorio Market and the Production of New Oratorios, 1800–1914

Aesthetic Theory and Criticism

The Libretto and Poetic Genres: Epic, Lyric, Dramatic

Oratorio as a Contemplative Genre, a Lyric Genre

Oratorio as a Lyric-Dramatic Genre

Oratorio as a Dramatic Genre

Oratorio as an Epic Genre

The Subject Matter

The Music

Oratorio as an Obsolete Genre

The Libretto

General Structure

Subject Matter and Treatment

New Testament Subjects

Old Testament Subjects

Subjects from History, Literature, and Legend

The Music

Musical Historicism

Innovations

Periodization and Summary of Styles

Chapter III. Selected German Oratorios

Friedrich Schneider, Das Weltgericht

Louis Spohr, Die letzten Dinge

Felix Mendelssohn

Paulus

Elias

Robert Schumann, Das Paradies und die Peri

Franz Liszt

Die Legende von der heiligen Elisabeth

Christus

Chapter IV. Oratorio in Britain: Terminology, Cultural and Social Context

Terminology, Genre, and the Handelian Legacy

Cultural and Social Context

Nationalism

Romanticism

Historicism

Religion

Secularization

Oratorio as Religious Experience

The Context of Oratorio Performance

Early Amateur Choruses

Music Education and the Sight-Singing Movement

Provincial Festivals to the 1830s

Provincial Choral Societies, 1840s to 1900

Provincial Festivals, 1830s to 1900

London Festivals and Choral Societies

The Anglican Choral Revival and Oratorio

Chapter V. Oratorio in Britain: Aesthetic Theory and Criticism, Libretto and Music

Introduction: The Oratorio Market and the Production of New Oratorios, 1800–1914

Aesthetic Theory and Criticism

William Crotch and the Sublime

The Aesthetic School versus Authority

The Dramatic versus the Epic Oratorio

George Bernard Shaw

The Libretto

Epic, Lyric, and Dramatic Elements

General Structure

Subject Matter and Treatment

Old Testament Subjects

New Testament Subjects

Subjects from History and Legend

The Music

Musical Historicism

The Pasticcio Oratorio

Periodization and Summary

Chapter VI. Selected English Oratorios

William Crotch, Palestine

George Macfarren, St. John the Baptist

C. Hubert H. Parry, Job

Edward Elgar, The Dream of Gerontius

Chapter VII. Oratorio in America: Cultural Context, Aesthetic Theory and Criticism

Oratorio in Early America

Oratorio and the Choral Society

Education in Vocal Music

Oratorio and Immigration

Choral Societies in Selected Cities

Boston

New York City

Philadelphia and Bethlehem

Cincinnati and Chicago

Toronto and Montreal

Oratorio and the Music Festival

Bethlehem: The Moravian Festivals

Worcester Music Festival

Boston Festivals

New York Festivals

Cincinnati May Festival

Festivals in Other Cities

Other Social Contexts

Oratorio in Educational Institutions

Oratorio in Church

Aesthetic Theory and Criticism: Dwight versus Fry

John Sullivan Dwight (1813–1893): American Transcendentalism and German Romanticism

William Henry Fry (1813–1864): American Nationalist, Opponent of Oratorio

Chapter VIII. Oratorio in America: Libretto, Music, Selected Oratorios

Libretto

Subject Matter and Treatment

Biblical Oratorios

Nonbiblical Oratorios

The Juvenile Oratorio

Music: General Aspects

Oratorios in the Great Tradition

Easy Oratorios

Selected Oratorios

George Frederick Bristow, Daniel

John Knowles Paine, St. Peter

Horatio William Parker, Hora novissima

Chapter IX. Oratorio in France: Social Context, Libretto, Music

Terminology and Genre

Cultural and Social Context

The French Revolution, Religious Revival, and Oratorio

The Revolution, the Catholic Church, Religious Music

Religious Revival and Oratorio, 1800–1830

Religious Revival and Oratorio, 1830–1870

Politics, the Church, and Oratorio in the Third Republic to 1914

Libretto

General Characteristics

Subject Matter and Treatment

Old Testament Oratorios

New Testament Oratorios

Oratorios Based on Legends

Music

Periodization

Characteristics of French Oratorio

Styles of Vocal Writing

Historicist Elements

Musical Treatment of God and Jesus

Recurring Melodic Material

Exoticism

Instrumental Music

Chapter X. Selected French Oratorios

Hector Berlioz, L’enfance du Christ

Camille Saint-Saëns, Oratorio de Noël

César Franck, Les béatitudes

Charles Gounod, La rédemption

Jules Massenet, La terre promise

Chapter XI. Some Areas of Lesser Activity

Italy

The Waning of Italian Oratorio

Central Composers

Simon Mayr

Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli

Paolo Bonfichi

Saverio Mercadante

Giovanni Pacini

Pietro Raimondi

Teodulo Mabellini

Enrico Bossi and Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari

Lorenzo Perosi

Pater Hartmann

Dvořák’s Svatá Ludmila and Tinel’s Franciscus

PART II. The Twentieth Century

Chapter XII. The Oratorio in the Twentieth Century

Terminology, Social Context

Libretto

Traditional Religious Subjects

New Testament

Old Testament

Medieval Saints

Literary Sources, Mythology, and Legends

Nontraditional Religious, Philosophical, and Historical Subjects

Political, Patriotic, and Nationalistic Oratorios in Socialist States

Music

Chapter XIII. Selected Twentieth-Century Oratorios

Igor Stravinsky, Oedipus rex: opera-oratorio

French Oratorio

Arthur Honegger

Le roi David

Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher

Frank Martin, Le vin herbé

Olivier Messiaen, La Transfiguration de notre seigneur Jésus-Christ

German Oratorio

Arnold Schoenberg, Die Jakobsleiter

Paul Hindemith, Das Unaufhörliche

Franz Schmidt, Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln

Hans Werner Henze, Das Floß der Medusa

English Oratorio

Ralph Vaughan Williams, Sancta civitas

William Walton, Belshazzar’s Feast

Michael Tippett

A Child of Our Time

The Mask of Time

Epilogue to A History of the Oratorio

Appendix. A Checklist of Twentieth-Century Oratorios

Bibliography

Part 1. Writings

Part 2. Oratorios

Index

Illustrations

Music Examples

Tables

Preface

In the late 1950s, while teaching a course in oratorio at Oberlin Conservatory, I became acutely aware of the dearth of recent scholarly literature in the field of oratorio history. Arnold Schering’s Geschichte des Oratoriums (1911), which my students could not read, was the standard work in that field. In the early 1960s I embarked upon a study of the origin of oratorio, which led to several small studies of oratorian laude and dialogues. By the late 1960s I had decided to write a history of oratorio. At first it was to be a single volume work, but the topic assumed a path of its own, and I followed it to this point.

The present volume completes A History of the Oratorio, the first three volumes of which were published in Chapel Hill: volume 1, The Oratorio in the Baroque Era: Italy, Vienna, Paris (1977); 2, The Oratorio in the Baroque Era: Protestant Germany and England (1977); and 3, The Oratorio in the Classical Era (1987). This volume starts where volume 3 stopped and, like the other volumes, its purpose is to report on the present state of knowledge in the field of oratorio history. As a synthesis of thought represented in specialized studies as well as an investigation of primary sources, the volume is intended to serve as a springboard for further research. While it is written primarily for the student of music, the student of cultural history may also find it useful.

Most of the volume treats the main currents in nineteenth-century oratorio, for the genre was a more important social and musical phenomenon in the nineteenth century than in the twentieth. For the purposes of this work, the nineteenth century extends to 1914 and the twentieth century begins after World War I, which is a crucial watershed for oratorio. The amateur choral movement and the numerous music festivals of nineteenth-century Germany and England, which created a market for oratorio, had begun to wane before World War I, but that cataclysmic event dealt the final blow to those social phenomena. After the war neither the choral movement nor the festivals regained their former strength, and oratorio became even more a work commissioned for rare special occasions than it had been before the war. Thus eleven of the thirteen chapters treat the main currents of oratorio in the nineteenth century.

If only two chapters deal with the twentieth century, I hope to have outlined the main currents in this period sufficiently to provide a structure for more specialized studies. Much research is needed before a more comprehensive survey of the twentieth-century oratorio can be undertaken. Such a survey is a task for a scholar in the twenty-first century. The appendix, A Checklist of Twentieth-Century Oratorios, might assist those engaged in further research.

So far as the nineteenth century is concerned, the term main currents as used above refers to the tendencies of oratorios in the cultural-linguistic areas in which the most new oratorios were composed. The German-speaking regions of Europe were the most prolific for the composition of new oratorios and Britain was second, followed by America and France, in that order. Other areas of Europe also produced oratorios but not in such abundance as those just named. The cultivation of oratorio in America was, of course, an importation by immigrants, mostly those from Germany and England.

Part I treats the main currents of the nineteenth century separately, while part II, chapter 12, deals with oratorio of the twentieth century as a unit, grouping together oratorios from various cultural-linguistic areas. Twentieth-century oratorios may be readily considered together, regardless of region, for fewer differences in libretto and musical style appear from one region to another than in the nineteenth century. One important exception, so far as the libretto is concerned, is oratorio in the Soviet Union and other socialist states of Eastern Europe. There oratorio was adapted more than elsewhere to political, patriotic, and nationalistic purposes. This type of libretto is treated separately in a section of chapter 12.

The bibliography is divided into two parts: part 1, writings, and part 2, oratorios. For details, see the introduction to the bibliography. In the body of the volume, references to oratorios are frequently given in short form, but the bibliography provides full information. The bibliography includes works that were available to me through 1 March 1999. Works that appeared after that date were not consulted unless (as in a few instances mentioned in footnotes) they were sent to me in prepublication manuscript or proof copy.

I am deeply indebted to many institutions and individuals for assistance and cooperation in the research and writing of this volume. To my own institution, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I owe a debt of gratitude for a Kenan Leave in the fall of 1989, a concurrent fellowship at the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, and a Research and Study Assignment in the spring of 1990 for work on this volume. I wish to acknowledge the Department of Music for supporting this project by assigning to me annual research assistants. A Fulbright grant to lecture at Moscow State Conservatory and undertake research on the Soviet oratorio in March and April 1990 contributed much to my understanding of oratorio in the Soviet Union.

I am grateful to Ida Reed, Music Librarian at the University of North Carolina, and her staff, especially Diane Pettit, for their constant and friendly assistance throughout my work on this project. I thank Diane Ota, Curator of Music at Boston Public Library, for her help during the summer of 1987, which I spent examining scores in the magnificent collection of oratorios in that library. Many thanks to Frank and Eloise Gardiner for the use of their home during that summer.

I wish to thank the many staff members in the Music Division of the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, the British Library, the Library of the Royal College of Music, the Bavarian State Library, and the Liszt Research Center, Budapest, for their invaluable assistance.

The several colleagues who kindly read portions of the manuscript in early versions to whom I am indebted are John Daverio and Jane Perry-Camp (chapters 1–3), Nicholas Temperley (chapters 4–6), Richard Crawford (chapters 7–8), and Ralph Locke (chapters 9–10). I am grateful to R. Larry Todd, who offered many valuable suggestions, especially concerning Mendelssohn and the German oratorio. I am extremely grateful to Eric D. Schramm, the copyeditor of this volume, for his careful work and for many suggestions that have improved the clarity of expression. Any remaining errors and infelicities, however, are my responsibility. I express my appreciation to my brother, William J. Smither, for his photographic work for Figures II-1, III-1, IV-1, and IV-3. For the epigraph by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, I am indepted to one of his disciples, Sojun Mel Weitsman, Abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center.

I am especially grateful to the staff of the University of North Carolina Press. Matthew Hodgson, former director of the press, accepted the first volume of A History of the Oratorio and encouraged the writing of all four. David Perry, editor-in-chief, and the others with whom I worked at the press were always friendly and supportive, making the publication process a pleasure.

My research assistants over the years combed nineteenth-century periodicals and furnished information for an extremely useful database. They included Paul Cornielson, Leanne Langley, Patricia Maddigan, Sally Norman, Georg Predota, Stephanie Schlagel, and Scott Warfield (and my apologies and thanks to those whose names I may have inadvertently omitted). Their work in this project and that of the graduate students in my seminars on oratorio formed the basis of Table I-1 and of numerous generalizations throughout the volume about German, English, and French oratorio. To these assistants and graduate students I owe a debt of gratitude.

Last but by no means least, I wish to express my deepest appreciation to my wife, Ann Woodward, for her sharp editorial eye, ever readiness with just the right word, good counsel, and constant, loving support throughout the project.

Chapel Hill, N.C.                                                        HOWARD E. SMITHER

October 1999

Abbreviations

(Bibliographical abbreviations are found in the bibliography.)

Libraries

A-Wgm Austria—Vienna, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde D-B Germany—Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz D-Bds Germany—Berlin, Deutsche Stattsbibliothek F-Pn France—Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale GB-Lbl Great Britain—London, British Library GB-Lcm Great Britain—London, Royal College of Music I-Rf Italy—Rome, Archivio dei Filippini (Congregazione dell’Oratorio) I-Rsc Italy—Rome, Biblioteca del Conservatorio di S. Cecilia I-Vgc Italy—Venice, Biblioteca della Fondazione Giorgio Cini US-Bp United States—Boston, Boston Public Library US-ATu United States—Atlanta, Emory University, Special Collections US-NYp United States—New York Public Library at Lincoln Center US-Wc United States—Washington, D.C., Library of Congress

Other Abbreviations

A Alto B Bass Bar Baritone Bc Basso continuo Br Brass Bsn Bassoon CD Compact disc Cl Clarinet Ctrbsn Contrabassoon Db Double bass Eng hn English horn Fl Flute Hn French horn Hp Harp m Measure mm Measures Ms Mezzo-soprano Ob Oboe Orch Orchestra Org Organ Pf Pianoforte pt Part reh. no. Rehearsal number S Soprano sc Scene Stgs Strings T Tenor Tba Tuba Timp Timpani Tbn Trombone Tpt Trumpet Vc Violoncello Vla Viola Vln Violin Ww Woodwinds

Part I

The Nineteenth Century

Chapter I

The German Oratorio: Terminology, Cultural and Social Context

Terminology

When a musically educated German of the nineteenth century—whether composer, performer, writer about music, or informed layman—used the word Oratorium (oratorio) as a musical term, what sort of work might he have had in mind? Would he have used the term as freely as some might today for any long piece with chorus and vocal soloists that he would hesitate to call an opera? Or perhaps for any long work with a religious text, including not only Handel’s Messiah and Samson, Mendelssohn’s Paulus and Elias, but also Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Verdi’s Requiem, and Dvořák’s Stabat Mater?¹ Based on a survey of the kinds of pieces most frequently performed, written about, and published under the term Oratorium, the answer is a qualified no. While terminological ambiguity for oratorio occasionally appears in nineteenth-century Germany, the term was more precisely applied than it tends to be in our time.

Table I-1 lists the eighteen pieces most frequently termed oratorios in concert notices and reviews in selected German music periodicals of the time.² For the most part the list suggests a clearly focused concept of oratorio

Note: The table lists the approximate number of notices and reviews of performances (not the number of performances) in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (original and new series), Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, Caecilia, and Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Notices stating that only excerpts were given have been excluded, but many of the performances were no doubt incomplete, for cuts were normal in such works. Included are all works, in any language, that were performed in German-speaking areas and were called oratorios in the notices and reviews. Thus English works by Handel (normally performed in German) are included, but notices of performances in England and other non-Germanic countries are excluded. The exact number of notices per work is not given, to avoid suggesting a higher degree of accuracy than is intended, but every effort has been made to reduce the margin of error to a minimum. Within each category, the more notices, the higher the placement. The list is intended to convey a general notion of the types of works called oratorios and the relative interest in those works. Needless to say, the earlier the work the more opportunities for performance; thus, caution is required in interpreting these raw data.

as a specific genre. It is striking that over half the works listed date from the eighteenth century and represent the Baroque and Classical periods, while only six (by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, and Friedrich Schneider) were composed later than Beethoven’s Christus am Oelberge. And equally striking is the frequency of references to performances of Haydn’s Schöpfung.³ Explanations for such attention to eighteenth-century oratorios and such interest in Haydn’s Schöpfung are proposed below, but for now the question of terminology must be pursued further. If these pieces were considered oratorios, what do they have in common?

To begin with the librettos—for the definition of oratorio, as we shall see, depends more on libretto than music—all but three treat themes that fall clearly within the Hebrew-Christian religious tradition. Yet even the exceptions have at least a tenuous religious dimension: Die Jahreszeiten, largely secular, includes references to God; Alexander’s Feast, essentially on the power of music, praises a Christian saint and derives its libretto from John Dryden’s Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day; and Das Paradies und die Peri, based on Thomas Moore’s Lalla Rookh (1817), is an oriental tale of mystical redemption. Of the clearly Hebrew-Christian texts, four use words predominantly or exclusively from the Bible,⁴ four combine poetry and biblical prose,⁵ and seven consist of newly composed librettos in verse.⁶ The librettos may be further described, quite generally, by aspects of literary presentation: narrative, dialogue among personages, and expression of personal emotion. More will be said of these literary types in chapter 2, but for now it should be noted that some of the librettos might be described as narrative-dialogic-reflective, others as narrative-reflective, and still others as dialogic-reflective.⁷ All the librettos have parts for chorus and soloists. Finally, the majority are long works, which would constitute a full-length concert (two to three hours or more), and are in two to four structural parts.⁸

Thus, it would seem that music journalists—often following the designations in published scores and printed programs—usually applied the term Oratorium to a musical setting of a long libretto on a Hebrew-Christian religious subject, composed of verse, biblical prose, or both; the libretto includes narrative or dialogic passages as well as reflective ones, falls into two or three large sections, and includes parts for soloists and chorus. Journalists did, of course, admit exceptions, for they occasionally applied the label Oratorium to shorter works and to some that have librettos with little or virtually no religious content.

The libretto was typically set to music for soloists, chorus, and orchestra. Every piece in Table I-1 includes these elements, yet a few a cappella oratorios were composed for male voices.⁹

Common to nearly every work in the table are some musical styles found also in opera. The eighteenth-century works employ solo styles of opera seria—recitative, aria, ensembles—while those of the nineteenth century adopt new procedures, including remembrance or reminiscence motives (Weltgericht, Elias, Elisabeth). Among nineteenth-century writers about the music of oratorio, some insist that the text be set in an elevated style, that is, in the style of church music or in a style between church music and opera.¹⁰ Writers suggesting a certain stylistic level for oratorio include Anton Friedrich Justus Thibaut and Gottfried Wilhelm Fink. In Thibaut’s widely circulated Reinheit der Tonkunst, the author speaks of church style, dedicated to piety; oratorio style, which encompases human greatness and seriousness; and opera style, which deals with the senses and the passions.¹¹ And Fink’s article Oratorium, in Schilling’s Encyclopädie, views oratorio as a middle style.¹²

The choruses of oratorio and opera are particularly indicative of the stylistic levels of those genres. In oratorio the choruses tend to be more numerous and longer than those in opera, and often more contrapuntally complex, at times incorporating fugues—even double or triple fugues.¹³Furthermore, several of the oratorios in Table I-1 include choral church music: chorales appear in the works by Bach, Graun, Mendelssohn, and Schneider, and Gregorian chant in Liszt’s Elisabeth and Christus. While elevated and middle styles are common to the works in Table I-1, lower folklike styles are used only occasionally for special effect, most notably in the oratorios by Haydn and Liszt.¹⁴

During the nineteenth century all the works in Table I-1 were typically performed in a concert hall—or, quite often, in a church functioning as a concert hall—and frequently within the context of a music festival. Most were originally intended for concert performance—but the works by Bach were, of course, originally for church. Graun’s Tod Jesu was heard not only in concert but frequently as a devotional work during Holy Week in churches throughout German-speaking lands. On rare occasions oratorios with dramatic texts were decked out as operas, with costumes, staging, and action, and given in theaters.

Conclusions from the evidence of Table I-1 by no means exhaust the ways that a musically educated German might have used Oratorium, but they help to provide a general framework for his application of the term. A consideration of German aesthetic theory and criticism of oratorio, which includes more on genre definition, is found in chapter 2.

Cultural and Social Context

Judging from the perspective of the history of Western art music to about 1800, one would expect a list like that in Table I-1 to consist mainly of recent works. Before the nineteenth century, typical patrons and audiences ignored old music and cultivated new.¹⁵ Thus from an earlier perspective, it would be surprising to find Graun, Haydn, and Beethoven performed even in the second half of the nineteenth century, yet their oratorios had been heard continuously in Germany virtually since the time of their origin. The popularity of Graun’s oratorio—clearly the one most often performed in Germany of the late eighteenth century—is explained largely by its effectiveness in meeting the chief musical requirement of Enlightenment religion: edification of the congregation, which means music calculated to touch the hearts of a musically uneducated flock rather than to praise God by high art.¹⁶ Religious practice changed slowly, and Graun’s Tod Jesu sounded annually in churches and concert halls until the late nineteenth century—the Berlin Singakademie, for instance, performed it nearly every Good Friday from 1796 to 1884. That the oratorios by Haydn and Beethoven continued to be heard can be explained by a new critical attitude on the continent in the early nineteenth century (but already established in England). This attitude fostered the claim of a canon of exemplary music (classics of music) that deserved to be heard frequently as part of a standard repertory. Table I-1 suggests that Haydn’s Schöpfung unquestionably belonged within the canon, while Beethoven’s Christus was a borderline case—in sharp contrast to his symphonies, which soon became permanent fixtures of the repertory.

While a continuous tradition of performing the major Classical composers extends from their time to ours, the same cannot be said for Bach and Handel. Their cases differ utterly from those of the other composers in the table. In Germany, their music was outmoded even before the mid-eighteenth century. Handel’s works were rarely heard and Bach’s were abandoned by all but a small circle of his admirers with an unconventional taste, mostly in Leipzig, Berlin, and Vienna. Even Messiah, in England an ever-sounding icon of musical and religious devotion from Handel’s time to the present, was introduced in Germany as late as 1772;¹⁷ it was seldom performed there until the nineteenth century, and Handel’s other oratorios fared even worse. For the Bach and Handel works that appear in Table I-1 to be heard with such frequency in Germany, they had to be revived from a state of considerable neglect in Handel’s case, and utter obscurity in Bach’s. Improbable as it may seem from a long historical perspective, they were indeed revived and widely admired. In fact, they significantly affected the style of nineteenth-century oratorio, and of church music as well. But why this revival of old music?

Any explanation of why German oratorio in the nineteenth century took the course—indeed the courses—that it did must explore several important strands in the fabric of nineteenth-century German political, social, and intellectual life. Particularly significant are the escalating cultural nationalism in Germany during and after the French occupation; romanticism, which began as a literary current in the later eighteenth century and became essential to the nineteenth century’s view of music; historicism, an attitude that led to the revivals of Bach, Handel, and the Renaissance a cappella style, and to the restoration of plainchant, all of which influenced German oratorio; attitudes toward religion, which began to change during the Enlightenment and changed even more during the secularization of the nineteenth century; and the amateur choral movement—the formation of singing societies and choral festivals for which oratorios were often composed—resulting from a new middle-class cultural milieu and new educational ideals.

Each of these is a vast topic meriting book-length treatment and, except for specifically German nationalism, each describes a pan-European movement. The following brief accounts, however, focus on the aspects that relate closely to German oratorio.

German Cultural Nationalism and Oratorio

When Johann Nikolaus Forkel (1749–1818) published his epoch-making biography of J. S. Bach (1802),¹⁸ which stands at the beginning of the Bach revival and clearly represents the newly emerging historicism, German-speaking lands were suffering under the occupation of French troops. If it can be said that Nationalistic music . . . invariably emerges as an expression of a politically motivated need and that nationalism in music must be understood primarily in terms of its historical function,¹⁹ then Forkel’s work and the Bach revival are prime examples not only of historicism but also of German musical nationalism. The Germans urgently needed to restore their cultural dignity after a humiliating defeat, and for them Bach’s music functioned as a national expression contributing to the fulfillment of that need. Indeed, Forkel subtitled his book, For patriotic admirers of true musical art; in the preface he considers Bach’s works an invaluable national patrimony with which no other nation has anything to compare;²⁰ and he closes the biography with a resounding nationalistic encomium: And this man—the greatest musical poet and the greatest musical orator that there has ever been and probably ever will be—was a German. Be proud of him, fatherland, be proud of him, but also be worthy of him!²¹

Forkel’s nationalistic fervor was echoed by numerous other writers about Bach’s music. Following the 1829 revival of the Matthäus-Passion, performed by the Berlin Singakademie and conducted by Felix Mendelssohn, Friedrich von Raumer expressed thanks to the Singakademie for the worthy centennial of [this] artwork of the fatherland;²² an anonymous writer in the Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung saw the Passion as a model work that should fill Germans with pride and declared that Germans need no longer seek out the seat of the muses in foreign lands, for these goddesses attest most unequivocally, through their self-revealing grace, to their presence in Germany;²³ and Mendelssohn’s twenty-year-old friend, Johann Gustav Droysen—later a distinguished historian and leader in German unification under Prussia—wrote that Bach’s Passion belongs not only to art and its history, rather, as the true purpose of art can only be, to the community, to the nation [der Gemeinde, dem Volk].²⁴

The Handel revival also answered the need for a restoration of German dignity—despite the composer’s having abandoned Germany and become an English subject. Typical is a reference to our magnificent countryman, Handel, in an 1827 review of Ignaz Franz von Mosel’s arrangements of Handel’s oratorios.²⁵ Equally characteristic is Gottfried Wilhelm Fink’s article Oratorium, printed in 1837 in Gustav Schilling’s Encyclopädie der gesammten musikalischen Wissenschaften. Fink proclaims, The highest and the crown of all in this branch of composition [oratorio] is and remains up to the present our German Handel, incomparable, standing far above all who preceded and followed him.²⁶ And Fink later adds that among oratorio composers, the most and the best are always Germans.²⁷

Given the powerful impact of Bach and Handel on the German oratorio in the nineteenth century, the prevailing view of their music as a great national patrimony, and a growing perception of oratorio as a German genre, a brief consideration of the background of German nationalism is in order. Although the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century was the period in which German nationalism blossomed—and developed a pernicious fruit in the Third Reich—its roots reach back to the eighteenth century.

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) formulated a philosophy of German cultural nationalism in his Auch eine philosophie der Geschichte zur bildung der Menschheit (1774) and Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784–91).²⁸ According to Herder, a nation (not identical with a state) is endowed with a unique character, a Volksgeist (spirit of the people, or national spirit), the most important symbols of which are the language and the culture of those who speak it—thus the mother tongue expresses the nation’s soul.²⁹ Herder was widely read in the nineteenth century. His ideas were taken up by many nationalistic writers, including the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), whose Reden an die deutsche Nation (fourteen lectures given in Berlin in 1807–8) constituted a clarion call of German nationalism.³⁰ Fichte followed Herder in emphasizing the linguistic basis of a nation, for men are formed by language far more than language is formed by men;³¹ he developed a new and influential approach to education, intended to mould the Germans into a corporate body;³² and he saw the German man, Luther, and his Reformation as embodying the characteristics of the true German spirit.³³ Indeed, Luther and his time began to assume new significance in the post-Napoleonic, Restoration period,³⁴ and that significance is reflected in oratorio.

An influential author of rousing nationalistic songs and propagandistic literature, Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769–1860), followed Herder’s Volksgeist theory in his major contribution, Die Geist der Zeit (4 vols., 1806–18).³⁵ In linking German cultural nationalism with Protestantism, Arndt formed a connection that became increasingly important in the course of the century and is reflected in oratorio texts, as we shall see. Fierce in his patriotism, Arndt proclaimed, The highest religion is to love the fatherland above law and princes, fathers and mothers, wives and children.³⁶ In one of his most popular songs, beginning Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland? (What is the German fatherland?), he defines the fatherland not in terms of states or regions but in Herder’s linguistic terms: As far as the German tongue rings out and praises God in Heaven with songs! That it should be! Brave German, call that yours!³⁷ In 1806, striving to arouse pride in the German people suffering under the French, Arndt passionately called for his compatriots to become worthy of their great heroes of the past: I wanted to speak to my nation [Volk] . . . but how do I speak to you, German nation? What are you and where are you? I seek and find you not. . . . Are you the nation of Hermann, of Luther, and of Gustavus Adolphus, who was also your man and your hero? I scarcely know you—they would not recognize you at all.³⁸

In the later nineteenth century, Bismark initiated his Kulturkampf (1871–78), a cultural struggle against the Catholic Church, which began shortly after the First Vatican Council enunciated the doctrine of papal infallibility (1870)—seen as a political threat—and after the Franco-Prussian War and the proclamation of the Second Reich (1871).³⁹ The Kulturkampf officially linked cultural and political nationalism with Protestantism to form a Kultur-Protestantismus that recalls ideas expressed early in the century by both Fichte and Arndt.

In this atmosphere, nationalistic oratorio was encouraged by the Royal Prussian Director of Music, Hermann Küster, in a published lecture of 1877, Die geistliche Musik und das Oratorium. As an oratorio composer, Küster is an apologist for the genre. He asserts:

Especially for oratorio in Germany indeed a great future is certain, for, apart from the countless singing societies that have already created the richest ground for it, oratorio has experienced an impulse from the recent great national events [i.e., the Franco-Prussian War and the proclamation of the Second Reich] that sooner or later must inspire genuine artistic souls to true national works. That, however, is by no means to say that these events themselves should always form the contents of such works, but only that the beautiful national consciousness that was shown by all Germans in such an uplifting manner in the latest great epoch be reflected in the conception of the content.⁴⁰

Küster’s own oratorios include one on a nationalistic subject, Hermann der Deutsche, which had been performed by the Berlin Singakademie in 1850.⁴¹

The growing perception of oratorio as a German national genre is reflected in nineteenth-century histories of the oratorio. In the foreword of Carl Hermann Bitter’s Beiträge zur Geschichte des Oratoriums (1872), one reads of the supremacy of Germany in oratorio composition as one facet of the triumph of the German spirit:

That it was primarily German composers in whose works the art form of oratorio has culminated in its completion and maturity will not lessen but increase the interest of the German readership in my work. . . .

To our astonished generation it has been granted to view the fatherland in the moments of its highest brilliance. No one can believe that the triumph of German power, which we now celebrate with uplifted feelings [is] a consequence of accidental circumstances. It rests on long and serious preparations through the work of the German spirit, which German power has toughened and directed.

Also art has its part in this work and its effects. One of its most noble blossoms is oratorio. May the future fail [oratorio] as little as [it will] the other work of the secure German spirit.⁴²

In the conclusion of his book Bitter reflects on the course he has taken: I have sought to show you how one stone after another has been added in order to make possible the building of the temple of German art into a hall of holy and pious exaltation, into the assembly point and focal point of those great ideas that are rooted as [much] in religion as in the love of the fatherland and of freedom.⁴³ Otto Wangemann begins the final paragraph of his Geschichte des Oratoriums (1882) with the words, We conclude this book with the wish that through it oratorio might have become to the friendly reader beloved and valued as a true German-national creation.⁴⁴

Considering the political developments in nineteenth-century Germany and the strong current of nationalism, it is no accident that heroic Germans of the distant past, including those mentioned by Arndt in 1806, were glorified in oratorios. In addition to Küster’s Hermann, mentioned above, other works on such subjects include Drobisch, Bonifazius (1826); Loewe, Gutenberg (1837); Engel, Winfried (ca. 1860); Bruch, Arminius (1877, on the same subject as Küster’s Hermann); Bruch, Gustav Adolf (1898); Meinardus, Luther (1878); and Vierling, Alarich (1881).⁴⁵ If German nationalism was an important motivation for the Bach and Handel revivals and for oratorios honoring heroes of German history, however, romanticism was surely its equal partner.

Romanticism and German Oratorio

The adjective romantic casts a wide net and draws in a varied catch. German romanticism began in literature, and the musical notion of romanticism grew from writings about music by such authors as Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (1773–98), Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853), and E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822). The numerous qualities of literature and music that are often grouped together as romantic are succinctly summarized by Friedrich Blume:

Schiller called his Jungfrau von Orléans (1802) a romantic tragedy, Weber his Freischütz (1820) a romantic opera. In a similar sense, too, Schiller in a letter to Goethe (28 June 1796) speaks of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahren as romantic, and this in view of its strange happenings and of characters like Mignon and the Harper. To the prevailing undertone of the word, in the sense of the unusual, were presently added the alluring secondary tones: the chivalrous, the antique or archaic, the basically naïve and folklike, the remote and fabulous, the strange and surprising, soon, too, the nocturnal, the ghostly, the frightful and terrifying—all these being of emotional and imaginative content that readily becomes associated with the concept of Romanticism, without necessarily always having to be wholly or predominantly included therein. What makes Romanticism so difficult to grasp is just this: that now one quality dominates, now another, and to satisfy the concept, it is quite sufficient if only one or just a few of these qualities are present.⁴⁶

Carl Dahlhaus, noting the disparate ideas contained in the concept of romanticism as applied in literature and the arts, cautions against seeking a common root from which all derive, yet he asserts that disinhibition, or the removal of barriers, is an important motivating factor:

Only within certain limits is it possible to reduce romanticism to a single essence without narrowing the subject or doing it methodological violence. Nevertheless, there is no overlooking the close connection between exoticism, historicism, and folklorism—all features as characteristic of nineteenth-century music as they are of the literature and painting of the time. . . . Whether the bourgeois educated classes—the carrier strata of musical romanticism—chose to overstep social bounds to folk music, historical bounds to early music, or geographical and ethnic bounds to oriental music, the motivation was always the same: an urge to disinhibit, to remove the barriers posed by classical rules of style. There was an irresistible attraction to what seemed different or remote.⁴⁷

Leon Plantinga describes the nature of the styles and ideas intended by the term romantic as applied to music in the 1830s and 1840s: a preference for the original rather than the normative, a pursuit of unique effects and extremes of expressiveness, the mobilization to that end of an enriched harmonic vocabulary, striking new figurations, textures, and tone colors.⁴⁸ Throughout the present volume the characteristics of romanticism will be noted in reference to oratorio.

Curiously enough, most of the works in Table I-1, regardless of historical period of origin, may be seen to represent some aspect of nineteenth-century romanticism. Attraction to what seemed different or remote clearly favored the historicism that led to the revivals of Bach and Handel, to the Handelian quality of Haydn’s Schöpfung, to the clear echoes of Bach and Handel in Mendelssohn’s oratorios, and to the emphasis on Gregorian chant and medieval, liturgical poetry in Liszt’s Christus. Equally romantic but for different reasons are the highly original, mystical visions in the libretto of Schneider’s Weltgericht, the oriental mysticism of the libretto of Schumann’s Peri, the Hungarian and German folklore in Liszt’s Elisabeth, the occasional use of folk-music style in both of Liszt’s and Haydn’s oratorios, and the chromatically enriched harmonic vocabulary of Haydn’s Representation of Chaos at the beginning of Die Schöpfung—a unique essay in tone painting that shocked listeners in Haydn’s day but remained fresh in Wagner’s. That Haydn’s remarkable oratorio could be understood in the nineteenth century as a classic and also an intriguing blend of romantic elements undoubtedly had much to do with its enormous popularity. Virtually every nineteenth-century work in the table reveals the romantic pursuit of special harmonic, orchestral, textural, and other effects to express extremes of emotional intensity, aspects of oratorio that will be considered in chapter 3.

We have seen historicism as a significant element of nationalism and romanticism. Yet as a generally pervasive point of view, historicism is so important for the context of nineteenth-century oratorio that it requires special treatment.

Historicism and German Oratorio

As understood in the present work, historicism is an attitude according to which reflection on and use of history are considered essential and may lead to the revival of thought, forms, styles, and musical works of the past.⁴⁹ In the nineteenth century particularly clear expressions of this attitude in architecture are the extensive uses of early forms in neoclassic and gothic-revival buildings throughout Europe and America.⁵⁰ The roots of nineteenth-century historicism in Germany, however, reach back to the second half of the eighteenth century. The writings from 1755–67 by Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68) on classical archaeology and the arts of antiquity played an important role in shaping the neoclassical movement in architecture and the visual arts. Winckelmann praised the noble simplicity and calm grandeur of ancient Greek art and asserted, There is but one way for the moderns to become great, and perhaps unequalled; I mean, by imitating the ancients.⁵¹ Goethe discovered the gothic beauties of the Strassburg cathedral and in 1772 wrote glowingly of that magnificent structure.⁵² By their reflections on art of the past, Winckelmann, Goethe, and their contemporaries were unconsciously laying the groundwork for nineteenth-century historicism in the visual arts and architecture. Likewise and in the same period, such figures as Baron Gottfried van Swieten (1733–1803) and Johann Friedrich Reichardt (1752–1814) were establishing the beginnings of nineteenth-century musical historicism, which influenced oratorio mainly through the Bach and Handel revivals, but also through the restoration of chorales from the time of Luther (a concomitant of the return to Lutheran liturgy), the restoration of plainchant (both Catholic and Lutheran), and the Palestrina revival, with its romantic enshrinement of a cappella singing as the ideal sound for worship.⁵³

The Handel Revival

With reference to Handel’s English oratorios in Germany, the word revival is conventional, but more to the point is discovery, for his oratorios were virtually unknown there until the 1770s. Among the early performances of Handel’s oratorios in Germany were the sporadic ones of Messiah (beginning in Hamburg, 1772) and Judas Maccabaeus (Berlin, 1774),⁵⁴ Swieten’s patronage of Handel oratorios in Vienna of the 1780s and 1790s (including commissions for Mozart to arrange Messiah, Alexander’s Feast, and other works), and the grandiose renditions of Messiah directed by Johann Adam Hiller in Berlin and Leipzig (1786) and in Breslau (1788).⁵⁵ Playing a role in the Handel revival by emulating elements of his oratorio style were Haydn’s Schöpfung and Jahreszeiten, composed after Haydn’s London visits, where monumental Handel performances in Westminster Abbey had inspired him. According to Carpani, who knew Haydn, "when he heard the music of Hendl [sic] in London, he was struck as if he had been put back to the beginning of his studies and had known nothing up to that moment. He meditated on every note and drew from those most learned scores the essence of true musical grandeur."⁵⁶

The nineteenth century saw ever increasing performances, publications, and published praise of Handel’s oratorios. They were heard mostly in music festivals—but few were given complete, for cuts were common, to adapt them to current concert life. In the first two decades of the century, Messiah, nearly always performed in Mozart’s arrangement,⁵⁷ was the most frequently heard of Handel’s oratorios, and continued to be for the rest of the century. Alexander’s Feast, Judas Maccabaeus, and Samson were occasionally given in those decades, but later came Saul (first heard in 1820), Jephtha (1824), Solomon (1825), Israel in Egypt and Joshua (both by 1827), Belshazzar (1834), and Athalia (1837). Virtually all were heard in new editions with added instruments and improved orchestration. In addition to Messiah and Alexander’s Feast edited by Mozart, Judas Maccabaeus was given in an edition occasionally attributed at the time to Mozart but probably prepared by Joseph Starzer; Samson, Israel in Egypt, and Jephtha, in editions by the Viennese Ignaz Franz von Mosel (1772–1844); and Athalia, Joshua, and Judas Maccabaeus, in editions by the Hamburger Johann Heinrich Clasing (1778–1829). In 1856, on the initiative of Georg Gottfried Gervinus (1805–71), the Deutsche Händel-Gesellschaft was founded for the publication of a complete, critical edition of the composer’s music—but Friedrich Chrysander’s role was ultimately the more important, for he was the sole editor of the series.

Some critics heaped praise on Handel’s Messiah as the ideal model for an oratorio, while others looked to his dramatic oratorios as models.⁵⁸ Most oratorios of the nineteenth century, particularly from the third decade on, reflect Handelian procedures—above all in their choruses. It is not surprising that Gustav Schilling, in his Geschichte der heutigen oder modernen Musik (1841), devotes a section to The Victory of Oratorio, Especially through Handel’s Influence, in which he claims for Handel’s oratorios a decisive role in shaping the direction of oratorio in his own time.⁵⁹ If the revival of Handel’s oratorios made rapid progress in the early nineteenth century, the same cannot be said of Bach’s choral works.

The Bach Revival

When Mendelssohn conducted the Berlin Singakademie in Bach’s recently rediscovered Matthäus-Passion in 1829, a century after the work was thought to have been premiered in Leipzig,⁶⁰ the event became a landmark in both the Bach revival and the history of oratorio. Strangely enough from today’s perspective, in which Bach’s cantatas, Passions, and oratorios loom large in the composer’s work, the early phase of the Bach revival focused mainly on his instrumental music. In 1782, when Johann Friedrich Reichardt expressed the same awe of Bach and Handel that Goethe had felt on contemplating the Strassburg cathedral—and quoted Goethe extensively—the gothic art that Reichardt admired was the instrumental fugue.⁶¹ Through Swieten, Mozart studied Bach’s fugues, arranged some for strings, and took part in the Sunday performances at Swieten’s apartment in the Viennese Court Library where one heard nothing but Handel and Bach.⁶²

Only after 1800 did new publications of Bach’s music begin: in the first two decades of the century, the keyboard music (first, Das wohltemperirte Clavier in 1801) and the sonatas and suites for strings. The only vocal works published in that period were the motets (1802–3) and the Magnificat (1811). In the 1830s, however, the Johannes-Passion, Matthäus-Passion, and B-Minor Mass appeared, and in 1850, the centenary of Bach’s death, the Bach-Gesellschaft was formed to publish a complete critical edition of his works. Influential in founding the society were Robert Schumann, Otto Jahn, Carl Ferdinand Becker, and Moritz Hauptmann. The first volume, including ten cantatas, appeared in 1851.

The role of the Berlin Singakademie was paramount in the revival of Bach’s vocal works. In 1800 Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758–1832) succeeded Carl Friedrich Christian Fasch (1736–1800) as director of this choral society and began to cultivate a variety of early music. To some extent Zelter was following Fasch’s lead, for the latter had conducted his first Bach rehearsal in the Singakademie, with the motet Komm, Jesu, komm, as early as 1794.⁶³ In its first three decades under Zelter, the Singakademie sang several Handel oratorios in public and rehearsed in private Bach’s motets, the B-Minor Mass, and some numbers from the Passions—but Zelter at first considered the large-scale works by Bach inappropriate for public performance.⁶⁴

As a composition student of Zelter’s since 1819 and a member of the Singakademie since 1820, Felix Mendelssohn (1809–46) became acquainted with the score of the Matthäus-Passion at an early age—he received a manuscript copy as a Christmas gift in 1823.⁶⁵ About four years later he and his friend, the Zelter student and singer Eduard Devrient, proposed a public performance of the work as a centennial celebration. Zelter agreed, and even allowed his twenty-year-old student to conduct the first performance—after two years of weekly rehearsals—on 11 March 1829, in the hall of the Singakademie.⁶⁶

The concert was viewed as an extremely significant event. The capacity audience numbered about 900 and included King Friedrich Wilhelm III and his court, and such other notable figures as Friedrich Schleiermacher, Friedrich Hegel, Gustav Droysen, and Heinrich Heine.⁶⁷ Two more performances were given to full houses, the second also conducted by Mendelssohn, the third by Zelter.⁶⁸ All performances were enthusiastically received. News of the overwhelming effect of the work traveled fast, and subsequent performances were sung by choral societies in Frankfurt am Main (1829), Breslau (1830), Stettin (1831), Königsberg (1832), and Kassel (1832), and by the royal chapel in Dresden (1833).⁶⁹

The importance of the Matthäus-Passion’s rediscovery for the Bach revival and for the history of oratorio cannot be overestimated. Bach was now viewed as a composer of monumental choral works comparable to those already known by Handel; he was now acclaimed, in this period of liturgical reform, as a champion of German Protestantism; and his usefulness to German nationalists as a symbol of cultural superiority was greatly enhanced. Mendelssohn relied heavily upon Bach’s procedures in the Matthäus-Passion for his Paulus, and countless other oratorio composers followed suit, whether inspired directly by Bach’s music or by Mendelssohn’s Paulus, itself an enormously influential model.

Religion and Oratorio

Secularization

Writing in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (1849) on The Future of Oratorio, C. L. Hilgenfeld calls attention to an important social trend of his time:

The wheel of time has turned. In all relationships of great significance for our existence the views of our time are different from those of the past century. The time of positive church belief has past, and with it the special receptivity to subjects of art that find their basis in it. Ignoring this circumstance and the facts that arise from it will not check the effects of either [the circumstance or the facts]. And in relation to [all] this, what concerns oratorio in particular is that it long ago made its way out of the church [and] into the concert hall. Or if now and then the place of performance is still retained, are the so-called church concerts anything other than concerts? The original specifically church character no longer exists in the conception [of oratorios]. The contemporary world still attends the performance of masterworks of this kind not because of the text, not to be edified, in the manner of a church believer, by stories from the Bible, but because of the artistic content [of the works].⁷⁰

Hilgenfeld’s article is not unbiased—in fact, it is a polemic against oratorio as a viable genre for contemporary composers. Nevertheless, this statement makes two points of basic importance to an understanding of the cultural and social context of nineteenth-century German oratorio: the secularization of nineteenth-century society and the concert function of the genre.

German society—together with European society in general—became secular on a far greater scale in the nineteenth century than in the eighteenth. True, Enlightenment thought in the eighteenth century—as represented, for instance, by Voltaire and the court of Frederick the Great—was rational, secular, anticlerical, and disdainful of traditional religion; but that was the thought of an intellectual elite. The nineteenth century, on the other hand, witnessed the secularization of thought and behavior in a broad segment of the population. Succinctly stated: Enlightenment was of the few. Secularization is of the many.⁷¹ Secularization had both social and intellectual roots.⁷² Its social roots are found in the ever-growing industrialization and urbanization of nineteenth-century society, which eroded religious belief and church attendance, particularly in Protestant Germany. For the working class, the process of secularization proceeded most rapidly among factory workers, while the class on which religion exercised the strongest hold was precisely the class which depended most directly and exclusively upon farming for its subsistence, and thus was most likely to be harmed by natural catastrophes against which there were few adequate means of defense.⁷³

Among the educated classes, which would include those who sang in oratorio choruses and formed concert audiences, secularization resulted largely from the continuing influence of the Enlightenment. The philosophy of Immanuel Kant and subsequently that of Friedrich Hegel permeated the universities, including the theological faculties, and posed formidable challenges to orthodox religious thought: Generations of German scholars enthusiastically applied the techniques of secular scholarship to subjects previously considered too sacred to be approached in any spirit other than that of unquestioning faith.⁷⁴ For example, David Friedrich Strauss’s Life of Jesus (1835), a widely read and influential work, is a biography of Jesus, the man, forged from the sources in a purely secular, rationalistic manner; and the Hegelian philosopher and critic of the Bible, Ludwig Feuerbach, in his most influential work, The Essence of Christianity (1841), asserted that Christianity is a myth made to satisfy man’s need to imagine perfection.

To a considerable extent a university education meant a secular education—one that tended to undermine traditional religious faith. Literary and scientific attacks on religion abounded and were read mainly by the educated middle classes. These classes were the leaders in German liberalism, which in Prussia brought them into conflict with the conservative Protestant church. They lived a largely urbanized existence, in which they made full use of mechanized transport facilities such as the railway and the steamship, could afford the latest benefits of medical science, and were beginning to create a network of leisure activities that left small room for churchgoing.⁷⁵ For many, concert life and the amateur singing society became important elements in that network.

Oratorio long ago made its way out of the church [and] into the concert hall, wrote Hilgenfeld, recognizing the basic function of the genre in Germany of