Word: oratorio
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...their titles, at least, most of the 220 new works in the 1949 output were clearly in tune. Dmitri Shostakovich, who once showed signs of becoming a great composer, had turned in a new oratorio, The Song of the Forests. It glorified Stalin's reforestation plan. Sample verse (by Poet Evgeny Dolmatovsky...
...Dramatic Tenor Ramon Vinay, the strong man, and Risë Stevens as a self-conscious seductress, the opera never got out of low gear. But in this case it was almost wholly the fault of Composer Saint-Saëns: his slow-moving Samson and Delilah is more often oratorio than opera...
...scholarly, mystic man who led a life of celibate solitude, De Falla began work in 1928 on a great oratorio for soloists chorus and orchestra, based on the Catalonian epic poem, La Atlantida, by Jacinto Verdaguer. When De Falla's Atlantida was finished, he used to tell Argentine friends, he wanted the first performance to be in Buenos Aires...
...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...