"Oratorio" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 character. Finally, he dismissed him abruptly and ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... commenced again. More operas were produced, with the one unvarying tale of fiasco, and at last, in 1737, having lost the whole of his hardly earned money, Handel was compelled to close the theatre, and, worse than all, to suspend payment for a time. Happily he now turned his thoughts to oratorio. "Saul" and "Israel in Egypt" were composed in quick succession; the last gigantic work being written in the almost incredibly short space of twenty-seven days. How great it is everyone now knows, but, at ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... Society at 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 ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... this visitor from Paris is in oratorio form and titled, appropriately, "The Promised Land." A huge choir of 400 voices, directed by Wallace Sabin and named in honor of the visitor, the "Saint-Saens Choir," rendered a good account of the ensemble sections of the choral composition, while the Exposition ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... number of the magazine there is a letter extending to seven columns from James Boswell, Esq., on his return to London, after being 'much agitated' by 'this jubilee of genius.' He describes it as 'truly an antique idea, a Grecian thought;' the oratorio at the great Stratford church, with the music by Dr Arne, was, he admits, grand and admirable, but 'I could have wished that prayers had been read, and a short sermon preached.' Then the performance of the dedication ode by Garrick is described ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... its barking a hundred yards behind us—the sharp anvil-blows of a huge hammer, followed by a dizzy scream of force and fury—a gigantic gurgling dominates the devilish oratorio; that, also, is coming from our side. "It's a ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... 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 interest ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... 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, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... in the works of the famous German were merely so many paraphrased plagiarisms from the compositions of other men. He possessed a phenomenal memory. He seemed to remember every note in every opera, symphony, oratorio, or concerto that anybody ever mentioned, and there was not a piece of music by a celebrated man but he was ready to "prove" that it had been stolen from ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Sir 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 intended to spend ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... 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, and ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... hours the numbers of the great Jeremy rolled forth like the notes of an oratorio played on the violoncello. Mary sat gloating in the new sensation of racking physical discomfort that the wooden chair brought her. Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr's. Jeremy's minor chords soothed her like the music of a tom-tom. "Why, oh why," she said ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... nature are on the air. The murmur always present where multitudes are assembled runs as an undertone; the sharp notes of frightened women and terrified children rise as the tones of an oratorio; steady, full, vibrant are the sounds of the ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... 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 by ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... de Deutsche Sprche? Den you allatag moost go To sinfonies, sonatas, Or an oratorio. Vhen you dinks you knows 'pout musik, More ash any other man, Be sure de soul of Deutschland ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... succeeded some sixteen operas, produced within six years, for the theatres of Italy and Sicily, not a note of which has survived. In 1803, Spontini went to Paris, in which capital again he produced some half-a-dozen operas and an oratorio,—all of which have perished. It would seem, however, as if there must have been something of grace in either Maestro or music, since Spontini was appointed music-director to the Empress Josephine; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... accumulation of titles, each greater than the preceding, and all culminating in that final 'Lord.' Handel has gloriously given the spirit of it in the crash of triumph with which that last word is pealed out in his oratorio. 'Saviour' means far more than the shepherds knew; for it declares the Child to be the deliverer from all evil, both of sin and sorrow, and the endower with all good, both of righteousness and blessedness. The 'Christ' claims that He is the fulfiller of prophecy, perfectly ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... heaven if it would only send me there. I rather think, however, that St. Sylvester's will suit me better for a little while. His Reverence is going to look me up some pupils, and I have bought a Churchman's almanac, and am thinking about starting an oratorio instead of my opera. Wasn't it strange that when your letter came from Brenthill we should remember that an old friend of my mother's lived there? Judith and she have been writing to each other ever since. Clifton is evidently undergoing tortures with the man he has got ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... "Hailstone 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... generation to produce much effect upon it. Original thought is much more common than is generally believed. Most people, if they only knew it, could write a good book or play, paint a good picture, compose a fine oratorio; but it takes an unusually able person to get the book well reviewed, persuade a manager to bring the play out, sell the picture, or compass the performance of the oratorio; indeed, the more vigorous and original any one of these things may be, the more difficult ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... which beat his at 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 subscription, ...
— Haydn • John F. Runciman
... to tell something that makes me glad and strong. I want to say it, and so try to say it. Things come to me in gleams and flashes, sometimes in words themselves, and I want to weave them into a melodious, harmonious whole. I was once at an oratorio, and that taught me the shape of a poem. In a pause of the music, I seemed all at once to see Handel's heavy countenance looking out of his great wig, as he sat putting together his notes, ordering about in his mind, and fixing in their ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... a sort 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... odes!—music and metre, which must have surely been as noble as their poetry, their sculpture, their architecture, possessed by the same exquisite sense of form and of proportion. One thing we can understand—how this musical form of the drama, which still remains to us in lower shapes, in the oratorio, in the opera, must have helped to raise their tragedies into that ideal sphere in which they all, like the "Antigone," live and move. So ideal and yet so human; nay rather, truly ideal, because truly human. ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... 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, and this, and say if anything ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Berlin orchestras will not play this 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... hundred young women. You may imagine how admirably those of the Mendicanti in particular are taught, since their establishment is under Bertoni's direction, who breathes around him the very soul of grace and harmony. The chapel in which we sat to hear the oratorio was dark and solemn; a screen of lofty pillars, formed of black marble and highly polished, excluded the glow of the western sky, and reflected the lamps which burn perpetually before the altar. Every tribune was thronged with people, whose ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford |
