XI
Certain Famous Oratorios
About the middle of the sixteenth century, San Filippo Neri, a zealous
Florentine priest, opened the chapel, or oratory, of his church in Rome,
for popular hours with his congregation. His main object being "to
allure young people to pious offices and to detain them from worldly
pleasure," he endeavored to make the occasions attractive as well as
edifying, and supplemented religious discourse and spiritual songs with
dramatized versions of Biblical stories provided with suitable music.
Associated with him in his labors for a good cause, was no less a
composer than that great reformer of Catholic church music, Giovanni
Pierluigi Sante da Palestrina, whose harmonies were declared by a
music-loving Pope to be those of the celestial Jerusalem. The laudable
enterprise proved successful. People flocked from all quarters to enjoy
the gratuitous entertainments, and a form of sacred musical art resulted
that derived from them its name.
Roswitha, a nun of the Gandersheim cloister, in the tenth century, made
the earliest attempt recorded to invest church plays with artistic
worth.
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