"Oratorio" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Mohammedans) the padre has prepared a treat of nuts and raisins for the boys and girls—somewhat of a Christmas cheer even so far across the sea. They have been practicing their Christmas songs, Ave Maria and the "Oratorio," which they will sing around the streets on Christmas eve. The schoolboys have received their presents—dictionaries, sugared crackers, and perfumed soap—and now that their vacation has begun, their little ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... States, Paris and Italy. In 1870 she made her first appearanceatmessina, and after two successful seasons appeared in London in 1872 with the Royal Italian Opera. Later she abandoned opera for oratorio. and sang at all the principal festivals. She has made several tours of Canada and of the United States, and in 1886 sang at the opening of the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London the ode written by Tennyson for the occasion. She frequently sang before Queen Victoria, the German emperor ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... passed before her eyes. It was the Manse parlour, the music professor with dirty, claw-like fingers but face alight with rapturous delight playing for her while she sang her first great oratorio aria. She could feel to-day that mysterious thrill in the dawning sense of new powers as the old man, with his hands upon her shoulders, cried in his trembling, broken voice, "My dear young lady, the ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... is grass.' Address your answer to Cambridge. If I am gone, it will be forwarded. Sad news just arrived—Russians beat—a bad set, eat nothing but oil, consequently must melt before a hard fire. I get awkward in my academic habiliments for want of practice. Got up in a window to hear the oratorio at St. Mary's, popped down in the middle of the Messiah, tore a woeful rent in the back of my best black silk gown, and damaged an egregious pair of breeches. Mem.—never tumbled from a church window during service. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... like an 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 ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... 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 ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... Philosophical Works, 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 most brilliant efforts, and so accurately finished in its minute parts, that it may be regarded ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... The Oratorio of Judith, Mr. Ireland observes, was written by Esquire William Huggins, honoured by the music of William de Fesch, aided by new painted scenery and magnifique decoration, and in the year 1733 brought upon the stage. As De Fesch[2] was a German and a genius, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... 24th of December, 1800, Napoleon, Josephine, and Hortense were going to the opera, to hear Haydn's Oratorio of the Creation. It was then to be performed for the first time. Napoleon, busily engaged in business, went reluctantly at the earnest solicitation of Josephine. Three gentlemen rode with Napoleon in his carriage. Josephine, with Hortense and other friends, followed in ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... the 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," ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... 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 of ganders and bubbleys? ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... 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; and it was ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Coda! If the art of today has made no progress in fugue, song, sonata, symphony, quartet, oratorio, opera [who has improved on Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert? Name! name! I say], what is the use of talking about "the average of today being higher"? How higher? You mean more people go to concerts, more people enjoy music than fifty or a hundred years ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... Tittoni lives a delightful family—the Count and Countess Gigliucci, with a son and two daughters. The Countess is the celebrated Clara Novello of oratorio fame. The three ladies are perfectly charming. I love to go to see them, and often drop in about tea-hour, when I get an excellent cup of English tea and delicious muffins, and enjoy them in this ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... he did not like to say he positively objected. He wished they had chosen an oratorio, or lecture, or anything more in keeping with the necessity it ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... in the accumulation of titles, each greater than the preceding, and all culminating in that final 'Lord.' Handel has gloriously given the spirit of it in the crash of triumph with which that last word is pealed out in his oratorio. 'Saviour' means far more than the shepherds knew; for it declares the Child to be the deliverer from all evil, both of sin and sorrow, and the endower with all good, both of righteousness and blessedness. The 'Christ' claims that He is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 piece, without supposing it to be ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... defer seruo eius Malachiae, 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 aliter decuit bestialem extingui libidinem quam ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... especially his fourth sermon on 'The Messiah' in the series suggested by Handel's Oratorio. There is not a taint of irreverence, but no one but a man who had an exquisite sense of humour could have written the first two pages of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the ladies back to the drawing-room. There was a grand piano in the front room, and to this Adela Branston went at Mr. Saltram's request, and began to play some of Handel's oratorio music, while he stood beside the piano, talking to her as she played. Mrs. Pallinson and Gilbert were thus left alone in the back room, and the lady did her best to improve the occasion by extorting what information she could from ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... distance from Hadley is the village of Edgeware, with Whitchurch, famous for its association with the musician Handel. He was organist here for several years, and on the small pipe-organ, still in the church though not in use, composed his oratorio, "Esther," and a less important work, "The Harmonious Blacksmith." The idea of the latter came from an odd character, the village blacksmith, who lived in Edgeware in Handel's day and who acquired some fame as a musician. His tombstone in the churchyard ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... most colossal achievements, such as the Passion according to St Matthew and the B Minor Mass (for discussion of which see ORATORIO and MASS), date from his cantorship at Leipzig. But, important and congenial as was his position there, and smooth as the course of his life seems to have been until his death in 1750, he must have had quite as much ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... clarinet, violoncello, oboe, and bassoon, the latter instrument giving the deep organ tones. There have been three services, and at one Sergeant Graves played an exquisite solo on the violin, "There is a green hill far away," from the oratorio of St. Paul. At another, Matijicek played Gounod's "Ave Maria" on the oboe, and last Sunday he gave us, on the clarinet, "Every valley shall be exalted." The choir proper consists of three sergeants and one corporal, and our tenor is his ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... and is impatient of counterfeits and things not alive. Picture and sculpture are the celebrations and festivities of form. But true art is never fixed, but always flowing. The sweetest music is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage. The oratorio has already lost its relation to the morning, to the sun, and the earth, but that persuading voice is in tune with these. All works of art should not be detached, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... difference 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 ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... in the oratorio season of 1771,' writes Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. 72), 'Mr. Johnson went with me to Covent Garden theatre. He sat surprisingly quiet, and I flattered myself that he was listening to the music. When we were got home he repeated these ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... I want 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 places with his pen, his drums, ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... importance to her. Besides, by craning her neck a little to avoid the hat of the rather strikingly dressed young woman in front of her, she could, at least, see the stage. The programme which she held in one hand announced that Miss Agatha Ismay would sing a certain aria from a great composer's oratorio, and she leaned further forward in her chair when a girl of about her own age, which was twenty-four, slowly advanced to the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... great overture to Isaiah's great oratorio are here sounded. These first chapters give out the themes which run through all the rest of his prophecies. Like most introductions, they were probably written last, when the prophet collected and arranged ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... than a year the 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 ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... came The Dream of Jubal. This, as I take it, was a work produced in the Jubalee Year. I don't know who JUBAL was, at least I've only a vague idea. Rather think he was a partner of TUBAL. TUBAL, JUBAL & CO., Instrument Makers. From this Oratorio I gather that JUBAL was an enthusiastic amateur, but that the only musical instrument he possessed was a tortoise-shell,—whether comb or simple shell I couldn't quite make out. However, comb or shell, he worked hard at it, until one morning, when he was practising outside the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... held his breath lest 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 ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... of 475. There has been marked growth in the numbers in the Department of Music. Students begin to seek the University for instruction in this department alone. During the year the Mozart Society rendered the oratorio of "Elijah," both in the city and at the University, ...
— American Missionary, August, 1888, (Vol. XLII, No. 8) • Various
... 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 Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... 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, As giver ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... 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
... 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 profound silence showed them ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... 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, and this, and say if anything more sublimely sacred and grand had ever been composed ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... Her movement across the room had a union of conscious stateliness and virgin grace which became her style of beauty; it was in itself the introduction to fine music. Mrs. Rossall went to accompany. Choice was made of a solo from an oratorio; Beatrice never sang trivialities of the day, a noteworthy variance from her habits in other things. In a little while, Wilfrid stirred to enable himself to see Emily's face; it showed deep feeling. And indeed it was impossible to hear that voice and remain unmoved; its sweetness, its force, its ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... sudden death in November, 1835, to consider the matter more seriously. He hastened to Berlin to his mother, and then returned to Leipsic, where he had charge of the famous Gewandhaus concerts. He settled down to work again, and especially to finish his oratorio of "St. Paul." In March, 1836, the University of Leipsic ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... period; to place at her disposal in each city a carriage and horses with their necessary attendants, and to give her in addition the sum of two hundred pounds sterling, or one thousand dollars, for each concert or oratorio in which the said ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... 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 ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... 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 group of ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... 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 ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... You have seen pantomimes and Peter Pan, perhaps; perhaps, too, a play of Shakespeare, - a comedy, it may be, which made you laugh, or even a tragedy which made you want to cry, or at least left you sad. Some of you, too, have been to "Pageants," and some may even have been to an oratorio, which last may have been ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... fond of music and reveled in the morning hour during which the organ was being played at Skibo. He was attracted by the oratorios as also Arthur Balfour. I remember they got tickets together for an oratorio at the Crystal Palace. Both are sane but philosophic, and not very far apart as philosophers, I understand; but some recent productions of Balfour send him far afield speculatively—a field which Morley never attempts. ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... the performance of his Lent Oratorio, (1759) of the Messiah, nature exhausted, he dropt his head upon the keys of the organ he was playing upon, and with difficulty raised up again. He recovered his spirits, and went on with the performance until the whole was finished. He was ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... 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
... "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 ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... am, to have had eyes and ears so long! There is music, now, which lifts the hair on my head, I feel it so much, ... yet all I know of it as art, all I have heard of the works of the masters in it, has been the mere sign and suggestion, such as the private piano may give. I never heard an oratorio, for instance, in my life—judge by that! It is a guess, I make, at all the greatness and divinity ... feeling in it, though, distinctly and certainly, that a composer like Beethoven must stand above the divinest painter in soul-godhead, and ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the earliest biographer of Handel, and, on his authority, a host of subsequent writers, took upon them to assert, without any apparent foundation, that the oratorio of the Messiah was performed in London in the year 1741, previously to Handel's visit to Ireland; but that it met with a cold reception, and this was one cause of his leaving England. Dr Burney, when composing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... governor, as though each were not entitled to see whatever is to be seen. The masters of thought may teach us better. They address their loftiest power in us, and never sing to oxen or dogs. The painting, poem, statue, oratorio, calls to me by name; the morning is an eye that solicits mine. Shall I take only the husks, and leave to another, contented, always, the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... 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 ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... nearer to the places of public entertainment, to which his employment as a writer for ephemeral publications, obliged him to resort. On the 20th of July, he acquaints his sister that he is engaged in writing an Oratorio, which when finished would purchase her a gown, and that she might depend on seeing him before the first of January, 1771. "Almost all the next Town and Country Magazine," he tells her, "is his." He boasts that "he has ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... unapproachable in their perfection. For many reasons the English public refused to hear them in his own time, and Handel, as a general whose business was to win the battle, not in this or that way, but in any possible way, turned his attention to oratorio, and in this found success and a fortune. In this lies also our great gain, for in addition to the Italian opera songs we have the oratorio choruses. But when we come to think of it, might not Buononcini and Cuzzoni ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... fond of music, and when he could afford it went to hear an oratorio that came within his reach, returning from it with a profound reverence for this mighty structure of tones, which made him sit meditatively, looking on the floor and throwing much unutterable language ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... such an experiment possible. We are by no means anxious to assume the Puritanical tone, or to lay down the doctrine that certain subjects are to be excluded from any department of art. The most sacred themes are worked into oratorio-books, and the most straitlaced portion of the community applauds their combination with music. But when a subject is in itself solemn, let it be solemnly treated. Opinions may be divided as to whether the story of the Prodigal Son can with propriety be represented in the form ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... 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
... a witty abstraction when cornered. His prose is full of winged neologisms, his poetry heavy with the metaphysics of ennui. Remy de Gourmont speaks of his magnificent work as the prelude to an oratorio achieved in silence. Laforgue, himself, called it an intermezzo, and in truth it is little more. His intellectual sensibility and his elemental soul make for mystifications. As if he knew the frailness of his tenure on life, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... great event of the season has been the performance of Mr. Paine's oratorio, "St. Peter," at Portland, June 3. This event is important, not only as the first appearance of an American oratorio, but also as the first direct proof we have had of the existence of creative ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... admiration for Wagner music than he would offer to show that all the good things 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 some other ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... 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 which, at three o'clock, I dined ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... 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 ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... use, in its nest of tarnished silk slept the golden thimble. There, too, in the corner, near a music-stand piled high with musical compositions of various schools and graduated complexity from "lessons for beginners" to the most arduous gamut of a German oratorio, slunk pathetically a poor lute-harp, the strings long since broken. There, too, by the window, hung a wire bird-cage, the bird long since dead. In a word, round the woman gazing on Jasper Losely, as he complacently drank his brandy, grouped the forlorn tokens ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sense that is conveyed by it; how the sons and daughters of the world may, with their every affection devoted to its perishable vanities, inhale all the delights of enthusiasm, as they sit in crowded assemblage, around the deep and solemn oratorio." "It is a very possible thing, that the moral and the rational and the active man, may have given no entrance into his bosom for any of the sentiments, and yet so overpowered may he be by the charm of vocal conveyance through which ...
— On Singing and Music • Society of Friends
... yawned between my own vivid and imaginative conception of this work and the only living presentations of it which I had ever heard. But for the present my tormented spirits were cheered and calmed by hearing the classical Schneider's oratorio Absalom rendered as ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... 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 the audience ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... 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 ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... earliest form in which we have it in English), 'gusto', 'harlequin'{18}, 'imbroglio', 'inamorato', 'influenza', 'lava', 'malaria', 'manifesto', 'masquerade' ('mascarata' in Hacket), 'motto', 'nuncio', 'opera', 'oratorio', 'pantaloon', 'parapet', 'pedantry', 'pianoforte', 'piazza', 'portico', 'proviso', 'regatta', 'ruffian', 'scaramouch', 'sequin', 'seraglio', 'sirocco', 'sonnet', 'stanza', 'stiletto', 'stucco', 'studio', 'terra-cotta', 'umbrella', 'virtuoso', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... 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
... Paris; turning his attention to opera he produced "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 ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... It was an oratorio. She watched the long wave roll on to the sinking into its fellow; and onward again for the swell and the weariful lapse; and up at last bursting to the sheet of white. The far-heard roar and the near commingled, giving Mr. Barmby a semblance ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... concerts were given to pay for a new piano, and as the proceeds did not quite fill the bill, we all gave up butter, selling the entire product of the dairy for three months to make up the deficit. That was just like Brook Farm. The most ambitious performance in my time was the rendition of the Oratorio of Saint Paul, which was given twice by request, but this was in the summer when we had ample room and verge ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... that particular summer in Wells. The whole population of Somersetshire, save those who had crops requiring rain, were in a heaven of delight from morning till night. Miss Tommy Tucker was very busy with some girl pupils, and as accompanist for oratorio practice; but there were blissful hours when she "studied" the cathedral with Fergus Appleton, watching him sketch the stately Central Tower, or the Lady Chapel, or the Chain Gate. There were afternoon walks to Tor Hill, winding ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to more real contests; Handel has set up an oratorio against the opera @ind succeeds. He has hired all the goddesses from farces and the singers of Roast Beef(779) from between the acts at both theatres, with a man with one note in his voice, and a girl without ever an one; and so they sing, and make brave hallelujahs; and the good company encore the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... continues its barking a hundred yards behind us—the sharp anvil-blows of a huge hammer, followed by a dizzy scream of force and fury—a gigantic gurgling dominates the devilish oratorio; that, also, is coming from our side. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... going to an 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 ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... there 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, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... music[Fr], work, number, opus; sonata; rondo, rondeau[Fr]; pastorale, cavatina[obs3], roulade[obs3], fantasia, concerto, overture, symphony, variations, cadenza; cadence; fugue, canon, quodlibet, serenade, notturno [Italian], dithyramb; opera, operetta; oratorio; composition, movement; stave; passamezzo [obs3][Italian], toccata, Vorspiel [German]. instrumental music; full score; minstrelsy, tweedledum and tweedledee, band, orchestra; concerted piece[Fr], potpourri, capriccio. vocal music, vocalism[obs3]; chaunt, chant; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... her, and she made her first appearance in a new oratorio. Her songs proved a principal ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... mother-instinct for government? But now with clearer vision we reread the record of the past. True, we find no Raphael or Beethoven, no Phidias or Michael Angelo among women. No woman has painted the greatest picture, carved the finest statue, composed the noblest oratorio or opera. Not many women's names appear after Joan of Arc's in the long list of warriors; but, as a ruler, woman stands ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... ourselves we take the great gift that is freely given to us of God. It is no accident that all his letters close thus. This benediction is the last word of God's revelation to man, the brightness in the clear west, the last strain of the great oratorio. The last word or last book of Scripture is 'the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.' Let us take up the solemn Amen in our ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... inferior singers in making up a general chorus is not always appreciated. In an artificial musical composition, as in an oratorio or an anthem, though there is a leading part, which is commonly the air, that gives character to the whole, yet this principal part would often be a very indifferent piece of melody, if performed without its accompaniments. These accompaniments ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... be soothed and uplifted. If they desire to be amused and enjoy a good laugh, they go to light opera or vaudeville; if they want a soothing, quieting mental refreshment, they attend a concert, opera or oratorio. Therefore I want to give them, when I sing, what they are in need of, what they are longing for. I want to have such control of myself that I shall be fitted to help and benefit every person in the audience who listens to me. Until I have thus prepared myself, I ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... squires, the splendid rivalry in liveries and outriders, and the immense quantity of gorgeous equipages—numbers with four horses—formed a scene which you can only witness in the mighty and aristocratic county of York. It beat a Drawing Room hollow, as much as an oratorio in York Minster does a concert in the Opera House. This delightful stay at York quite refreshed me, and I am not the least ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... arms, when you never had one there? You put words of temptation into the mouth of your villain which no real scamp would think of using, for their only effect would be to alarm your heroine. You talk of a planned seduction as if it were part of an oratorio. And you make your hero so superlatively pure and sweet that no woman formed of flesh and blood could endure him for ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... 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; up and ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... Dramatized versions of biblical stories. Palestrina and harmonies of celestial Jerusalem. Religious dramas of Roswitha. Laura Guidiccioni's first oratorio text. Music by Cavalieri. At Santa Maria della Vallicella. Orchestra behind the scene. Description. Carissimi, "father of oratorio and cantata." Alessandro Scarlatti. Another Alessandro. Dr. Parry's opinion. "San Giovanni Battista" and famous air. Tradition about ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... 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 a faith, an assured conviction, ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... abandoned court of Louis XIV. had on fast days its sacred concerts, doubtless entering in some degree into the religious expression of the music, and thus idle and frivolous women at the present day will weep at an oratorio. So the sublimest effects of landscape may be sought through mere indolence; and even those who are not ignorant, or dull, judge often erroneously of such effects of art, because their very openness to all pleasant and sacred association instantly colors ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... questions arise. Shall the program consist of miscellaneous selections or of a connected work? If the latter, shall it be of the operatic type, involving action, scenery, and costumes, or shall it be of the cantata or oratorio type? And if the latter, shall heavy works like the Messiah and Elijah be given, or shall our efforts be confined to presenting the shorter and simpler modern works which are musically interesting and in the rendition of which the ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens
... drink, while Thora served him, and Conall smoked and watched them with a 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
... Oratorio (that profanation of the purposes of the cheerful playhouse) watching the faces of the auditory in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's Laughing Audience!) immoveable, or affecting some faint emotion,—till (as some have said, that our occupations in the next world will be but a shadow of what ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... without pride,—a very just 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
... 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 from ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... 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 ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... conscience-stricken Assur pours forth his soul in tempest. More thoroughly Italian in type is 'Mose in Egitto,' a curious though effective version of the Biblical story, which is still occasionally performed as an oratorio in this country, a proceeding which naturally gives little idea of its real merits. In 1833 it was actually given under the proper conditions, as a sacred opera, strengthened by a generous infusion of Handel's 'Israel in Egypt,' under the direction ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... Society, of which we were all members. The soloists were many of the best on this continent. What magnificent music we gave. I lived just in a world of song and associated with the best of them and was accepted and acknowledged by them all. I remember well when we gave the oratorio, David, April 3, 1859, the forty-third season. I never had sung with so many singers before and I was in a maze of excitement. I was ready also to enjoy every note, for it was the largest aggregation of solo singers I had ever ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson |
