Excerpt from Oratorios and Masses

Grandeur, nobility and pathos of church music. It is free from the spectacular tendencies and the over-emphasis upon vocal virtuosity, which too often in the opera magnify the sensuous at the cost of the intellectual, and at the same time it gives scope for the variety of expression, the contrast of character and the direct personal appeal which impart to dramatic music its peculiar power. The lyric, the epic and dramatic unite for the evocation of an emotion which is kept by the nature of the subject within healthful and elevating channels. The thought of a trivial or sensational oratorio would involve a contradiction in terms. Even the secular oratorio and the cantata have never for an instant shown any inclination to degenerate. Performers and listeners come to the work in a mood of seriousness, musical enjoyment seems to minister to a still higher end. This commanding presence of the religious idea has no doubt often helped to popularize works whose sheer musical qualities would hardly suffice to maintain such prestige. Even works of undoubted artistic power, such as Handel's Messiah, have owed their unshaken position more to their text and subject than to the beauty of their music. It would have been impossible for any opera or even any secular oratorio, however great its music, to take the place that is held by the Messiah in number of performances or in popular esteem. This fact of the supremacy of text and subject over music as a means of attraction may possibly act injuriously upon the development of the oratorio as an art form, since the composer knows that his musical genius will avail him little unless he can enlist the popular religious interest on his side. On the other hand, the fact that the oratorio gives opportunity for unlimited musical invention, and that a really fine work of this kind is sure of a wide adoption and a permanent success, will always serve as an encouragement to composers of lofty aims.

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