Word: oratorio
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...willed just about everything since to be severe and dry, a kind of music he regards as "more mature." In the years since The Rite, Stravinsky has turned out some 60 works, including The Wedding which is virtually a textbook today in some music classes; a remarkable oratorio, Oedipus Rex; The Soldier's Tale, Symphonies for Wind Instruments, Symphony in Three Movements, a Violin Concerto. All are as precisely and beautifully made as a fine watch-and, say his critics, most are about as emotional...
...modern composers is that they don't get a hearing. On that score, Igor Stravinsky has little to complain of. In the past month, packed houses in Manhattan had heard everything from his popular Petrouchka (1911) to his dusty-dry Symphony in C (1940). Even his opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex had been uncovered for the first time in 17 years. Bobbing, crouching and flapping his arms like a grotesque little bird, Composer Stravinsky had conducted several performances of his music himself...
...Woodworth made his first mistake when he selected his program. Handel's oratorio "L'Allegro" was the chief attraction. Instead of presenting all or most of the work, Woodworth elected to cut it down to less than half its original length and to devote the rest of the program to compositions by Randall Thompson '20. Granting Randall Thompson the right to performances by the Glee Club of his alma mater, one still wonders why such performances might not have been saved for some other occasion and "L'Allegro" given in a manner which did not make its music overshortened...
...published in the U.S. (Scribner; $6); the late Romain Rolland's Essays on Music (Allen, Towne & Heath; $5) had a fat chapter on him. Handelian Robert Manson Myers had written a book-Handel's Messiah, a Touchstone of Taste (Macmillan; $5), out next week-on his greatest oratorio. Handel was not always so well treated...
From the point of view of form, this produces a mixture. The piece is kept from the oratorio class precisely by its subject, which is too eventful and dramatically intense for an oratorio. One cannot help wishing for a physical reaction from the characters as the events of the tragedy unfold: but all they do is stand there and sing...