chorus, and fully recognized the value of a distinct oratorio manner. His own oratorios were short, but are still decidedly interesting. He also, as has been noted, developed the cantata—a work utilizing the dramatic forms of recitative and aria, with a more or less dramatic plan, but designed either for a single voice or for a few voices, and available for use in actual church services, often with organ accompaniment.
Giacomo Carissimi (d. 1674), born near Rome about 1604 and probably
trained there, was from 1624 choirmaster at Assisi and from 1628 at S.
Apollinare in Rome, remaining till his death. His oratorios number 15 or
more, the most famous being Jephta and Jonas (dates unknown). His
church music includes many motets and some masses (one for 12 voices on
the old melody L'omme armé, said to be the last written on that hackneyed
'subject'). He left many cantatas, together with some secular and half-humorous
pieces, with a treatise on singing (known only in German, 3d ed.
1689). His contributions to the monodic style have already been mentioned.
As a contrapuntist he was notable, not as a follower of Palestrina, but for the
accommodation of the old facility to the new conceptions of tonality. He is
commonly reckoned as next to Monteverdi in importance in the century.
Carissimi stands almost alone in his adherence to Biblical subjects in his oratorios—the Flood, Abraham and Isaac, Jephtha, the Judgment of Solomon, Ezechiel, Job, Jonah, Daniel, Belshazzar, the Last Judgment, the Joy of the Blessed. Among other oratorios up to 1670, only a few are strictly Biblical, while several celebrate the life of some saint (especially Loyola), and some are moralities or similar works.
The meagre list of Italian oratorio-writers in the early period includes Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger (d. 1650?), a pretentious German theorbist who pushed himself into church circles at Rome, writing 2 oratorios (c. 1630), an opera, madrigals, solo works and several lute-books (from 1604); Domenico Mazzocchi, a Roman lawyer, the first to mention the signs for crescendo and diminuendo, with 2 oratorios (1631); Stefano Landi (1634); Luigi Rossi, an early Roman writer of cantatas; Loreto Vittori (d. 1670) of the Papal Chapel (1647), besides cantatas; Francesco Bazzini (d. 1660), a noted theorbist of Bergamo (c. 1650); Marco Marazzoli (d. 1662), one at Rome (1658), besides others in MS.; Giovanni Antonio Boretti of Parma; Giuseffo Tricarico at Vienna (1661); P. A. Ziani (d. 1711) of Bergamo, later at Vienna, with 2 (1662); Giovanni Antonio Manara of Bologna, with 3 (1665-85); and Maurizio Cruciati, also of Bologna (1667).
It will be noted that what interest existed was chiefly at Rome.
As the century went on, attention to the oratorio continued
in Italy to a considerable extent, but the early types persisted
without special improvement, though the use of Biblical subjects
increased. As compared with the genius for oratorio-writing
that presently developed in Germany, the Italian
