Word: oratorio
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Stravinsky calls the work an "opera-oratorio," but as presented yesterday, without scenery or action, it seems to fit more closely into the latter category. It tells the Oedipus story in an abbreviated form, with the chorus playing about the same part that it does in the play and each of the male singers taking several roles. Although the text is in Latin, a speaker breaks in with details of the plot in English a few times during the performance...
Swiss Composer Arthur Honegger had successfully set to music everything from Greek legends (Antigone) to steam engines (Pacific 231) and sports (Rugby). Then he bit off a chunk that many a musical better-Verdi, Gounod and Tchaikovsky, among others-had broken a tooth on. He began work on an oratorio on Joan of Arc. French Poet (and onetime Ambassador to the U.S.) Paul Claudel provided a mystical, introspective text...
...overcoat and dash four blocks to CBS's studios to lead the Columbia Chorale and Symphony in Beethoven's Mass in C. Two days-and eight hours of rehearsals-later, he will conduct his Collegiate Chorale at Carnegie Hall in Bach's three-hour-long Christmas Oratorio; next night, Christmas carols for CBS's annual Christmas program. And on top of all that, he has a Christmas symphony concert at the Juilliard School of Music, where he is director of choral conducting -in his spare time...
...kind in years. The Messiah, he had found, had never been properly performed since Handel's day. Original scores and pages had been misplaced. Performers and singers had arbitrarily changed notes, keys and instrumentation to suit their own peculiarities. Handel himself, who wrote the 3½-hour-long oratorio in one 24-day burst, had reworked it several times to accommodate the talents of whatever group sang...
Five days before Christmas, using the Coopersmith version, the 200 voices of the New York Oratorio Society will sing the first correct and uncut Messiah ever heard in the U.S. The differences between it and the versions previously heard would probably not be apparent to ordinary ears, but they meant a lot to meticulous musicologists. Coopersmith had found at least 50 mistakes in all standard editions of the Messiah...