Musical questions and answers thread

[Roehre]

I don't think every Oratorio is on a Biblical texts, though the texts are normally of a religious or spiritual text, like Dvorak: St Ludmila. What about Tippett's A Child of Our Time, which is normally classed as an Oratorio. Then there are works such as Honegger's Joan of Arc or Martinu's Epic of Gilgamesh, and what genre does Schumann's Scenes from Goethe's Faust come under? Tricky one this, in some respects.

Classified as an oratorio is not the same as being one.
Schumann's Scenes are (partially) based on the same text as Mahler 8 part 2. The latter being based on the Veni Creator spiritus pentecost hymn in the 1st mvt and Goethe in the 2nd, does this make it a symphony-oratorio, like Mendelssohn 2, of which the (extended) finale is completely based on biblical texts?
Is Brahms' Deutsches Requiem hence an oratorio as it is not based on the liturgical texts of a Mass for the deceased, but on Brahms' choice of biblical ones?

Like Pabmusic hinted at already, there is a grey area of pieces which might be an oratorio, but which is not called as such by the composer. Hence, probably here we've got another example of: an oratorio is an oratorio as soon as the composer names it an oratorio (similar to: a symphony is a symphony as soon as the composer calls it a symphony)?

[EdgeleyRob]

Well I'm glad I asked the question.
Fascinating replies folks,many thanks to you all.

[makropulos]

Well I'm glad I asked the question.
Fascinating replies folks,many thanks to you all.

Has anybody mentioned Semele, Handel's so called (though not by him) "secular oratorio"? It was first performed in 1743 as an oratorio rather than an opera, though everybody seems to have regarded it as an opera in disguise.

[Pabmusic]

...Like Pabmusic hinted at already, there is a grey area of pieces which might be an oratorio, but which is not called as such by the composer. Hence, probably here we've got another example of: an oratorio is an oratorio as soon as the composer names it an oratorio (similar to: a symphony is a symphony as soon as the composer calls it a symphony)?

Precisely. 'Oratorio', 'symphony', even 'sonata' are descriptive terms, not prescriptive ones, even if we try to pretend that they were once and are still.

[Roehre]

Has anybody mentioned Semele, Handel's so called (though not by him) "secular oratorio"? It was first performed in 1743 as an oratorio rather than an opera, though everybody seems to have regarded it as an opera in disguise.

Makropulos, if you were able to define the musical and intrinsical differences between Handel's operas and his oratorios you are in for an immediate DMus

[ahinton]

Makropulos, if you were able to define the musical and intrinsical differences between Handel's operas and his oratorios you are in for an immediate DMus

Might I also be in for the chance of qualifying for one by posing the question "Is Schönberg's Gurrelieder a cantata (as usually described), a song-cycle (as which it was initially conceived), a secular oratorio, a vocal symphony or something else?"...

[Roehre]

Might I also be in for the chance of qualifying for one by posing the question "Is Schönberg's Gurrelieder a cantata (as usually described), a song-cycle (as which it was initially conceived), a secular oratorio, a vocal symphony or something else?"...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Definitely "something else".


Now that I've been doctored, I would add Moses und Aron into the "is it/isn't it" mix (-up).

Weren't Oratorios so-called because the Catholic Church wouldn't permit acting in a church, so the first ones were performed in the chapels known as Oratories - and that Cavallieri (who wrote the first known oratorio, The Representation of the Soul and Body - which had acting and dancing and which he described as "an Opera") wrote specifically for the Oratory of St Phillipo Neri?

[Roehre]

Definitely "something else".


Now that I've been doctored, I would add Moses und Aron into the "is it/isn't it" mix (-up).

Weren't Oratorios so-called because the Catholic Church wouldn't permit acting in a church, so the first ones were performed in the chapels known as Oratories - and that Cavallieri (who wrote the first known oratorio, The Representation of the Soul and Body - which had acting and dancing and which he described as "an Opera") wrote specifically for the Oratory of St Phillipo Neri?

Despite its subject, Moses und Aron is an opera, full stop.

It was at least forbidden to perform Masses or (Mass-movements) in theatres.
Hence at the premiere of 3 mvts of Beethoven's Missa solemnis -the same concert as the premiere of the Ninth- these were announced as 3 hymns.

[Richard Tarleton]

Makropulos, if you were able to define the musical and intrinsical differences between Handel's operas and his oratorios you are in for an immediate DMus

A glance at makropoulos's CV suggests he very well may already have one

[makropulos]

Makropulos, if you were able to define the musical and intrinsical differences between Handel's operas and his oratorios you are in for an immediate DMus

Indeed!! :)
I wouldn't dare to try. Fortunately, Handel seems to have thought of these things as pretty fluid. After all, Semele was just called "The Story of Semele" (neither an oratorio or an opera) back in 1743, when it was performed in the Covent Garden concerts - which made it, de facto, an oratorio rather than an opera. By the time Chrysander published it as Vol. VII of his Handel complete edition it had become "Oratorium", though in the foreword to that edition, Chrysander makes it clear that he's uneasy applying the term to Semele.

[Roehre]

A glance at makropoulos's CV suggests he very well may already have one

You know the German way to do it, don't you?
Prof.Prof.Dr.Dr.Dr.Dr.h.c. Anton Makropulos

[Richard Tarleton]

I am frivolously reminded of a Fawlty Towers episode:

Oh, Dr.
Abbott, sorry.
- Doctor? - Yes? I'm terribly sorry, we hadn't been told.
We hadn't been told you were a doctor.
How do you do, doctor? Very nice to have you with us, doctor.
Thank you.
You're in room five, doctor.
And Mrs.
Abbott, how do you do? Dr.
Abbott, actually.
- I'm sorry? - Dr.
Abbott.
Two doctors.
- You're two doctors? - Yes.
How did you become two doctors? Most unusual.
I mean, did you take the exam twice, or No.
My wife's a doctor.
I'm a doctor.
You're a doctor, too.
So you're three doctors! No, I'm just one doctor.
My wife is another doctor.

[ahinton]

Definitely "something else".

Oh, it's that all right!...

[teamsaint]

ok, not really sure of my ground, or where to put this....but

here's a rather excellent old Motown record.

Have a listen. Anything a bit unusual about it?

It has the verse in a major key, and a chorus in the minor, which a flick around google does suggest is rather unusual, at least in mainstream pop.

Edit: Without the sheet music or plodding through it at the piano, I'm not quite sure what IS happening, but the chorus feels in a minor key, mostly due to that repeated guitar note.

is this actually not that common? If not, why not? what about in other song genres?



anyway, just a potential discussion point, if anybody is interested.

other examples of songs following this pattern are " Under the boardwalk," , " I'm still Standing", and " The fool on the hill ".