The essays in this book (“Five sacred pieces. Poetic texts of the scared oratorios in Metastasio, Handel, Haydn”) analyse the poetic texts of some celebrated 18th-century oratorios and aim to explore a research fi eld still relatively neglected by literary and music critics. One consequence of this neglect is that in radio and television programmes, and even in presentations and performances organized in churches, these religious texts are totally ignored.
This book is an attempt then to redress a situation created more than three centuries ago by triumphant Enlightenment preconceptions that aimed to free literary, artistic and musical productions from the “religious”, which at best was respected and left up to individual discretion.
The reference point for the sacred oratorios is the Bible and ascetic and moral theological thinking in the millenary Christian tradition as well as in some apocryphal writings which, compared to the Old and New Testaments, are generally fanciful and of little literary value.
The works examined here are not presented in chronological order of production, but according to the theme in the biblical framework: the creation of the universe, the Messianic prophecies, and the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These were the themes which attracted the artistic genius and religious sensibilities of Metastasio, Handel and Haydn.