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 coast of the Gulf of Finland, opposite Kronstadt. Pop. (1897) 5333. It is well known for its imperial palace and as a summer resort for the inhabitants of St Petersburg, from which it is 25 m. W. by rail. In 1714 Menshikov, to whom the site was presented by Peter the Great, erected for himself the country-seat of Oranienbaum; but confiscated, like the rest of his estates, in 1727, it became an imperial residence. In 1743 the empress Elizabeth assigned the place to Peter III., who built there a castle, Peterstadt (now destroyed), for his Holstein soldiers.

ORAONS, an aboriginal people of Bengal. They call themselves Kurukh, and are sometimes also known as Dhangars. Their home is in Ranchi district and there are communities in the Chota Nagpur states and Palamau, while elsewhere they have scattered settlements, e.g. in Jalpaiguri and the Darjeeling Terai, whither they have gone to work in the tea-gardens. They number upwards of three quarters of a million. According to their traditions the tribe migrated from the west coast of India. The Oraons are a small race (average 5 ft. 2 in.); the usual colour is dark brown, but some are as light as Hindus. They are heavy-jawed, with large mouths, thick lips and projecting teeth. They reverence the sun, and acknowledge a supreme god, Dharmi or Dharmest, the holy one, who is perfectly pure, but whose beneficent designs are thwarted by evil spirits. They burn their dead, and the urn with the ashes is suspended outside the deceased’s hut to await the period of the year especially set apart for burials. The language is harsh and guttural, having much connexion with Tamil. In 1901 the total number of speakers of Kurukh or Oraon in all India was nearly 600,000.

ORATORIO, the name given to a form of religious music with chorus, solo voices and instruments, independent or at least separable from the liturgy, and on a larger scale than the (q.v.). Its early history is involved in that of opera (see and ), though there is a more definite interest in its antecedents. The term is supposed, with good reason, to be derived from the fact that St Filippo Neri’s Oratory was the place for which Animuccia’s setting of the Laudi Spirituali were written; and the custom of interspersing these hymns among liturgical or other forms of the recitation of a Biblical story is certainly one of several sources to which the idea of modern oratorio may be traced. Further claim to the “invention” of the oratorio cannot be given to Animuccia. A more ancient source is the use of incidental music in miracle-plays and in such medieval dramatic processions as the 12th-century Prose de L’Âne, which on the 1st of January celebrated at Beauvais the Flight into Egypt. But the most ancient origin of all has hardly been duly brought into line, although it is the only form that led to classically artistic results before the time of Bach. This is the Roman Catholic rite of reciting, during Holy Week, the story of the Passion according to the Four Gospels, in such a manner that the words of the Evangelist are sung in Gregorian tones by a tenor, all directly quoted utterances are sung by voices appropriate to the speakers, and the responsa turbae or utterances of the whole body of disciples (e.g. “Lord, is it I?”) and of crowds, are sung by a chorus. The only portion of this scheme that concerned composers was the responsa turbae, to which it was optional to add polyphonic settings of the Seven Last Words or other special utterances of the Saviour. The narrative and the parts of single speakers were sung in the Gregorian tones appointed in the liturgy. Thus the settings of the Passion by Victoria and Soriano represent, in a very simple form, a perfect solution of the art-problem of oratorio, as that problem presented itself to an age in which “dramatic music,” or even “epic music,” would have been a contradiction in terms. It has been aptly said that the object of the composer in setting such words as “Crucify Him” was not to express the feelings of an infuriated crowd, but rather to express the contrition of devout Christians telling the story; though this view must be admitted to be, like the 16th-century music itself, decidedly more modern than the quaintly dramatic traditional methods of performance. As an art-form this early Passion-music owes its perfection primarily to the church. The liturgy gives body to all the art-forms of 16th-century church music, and it is for the composer to spiritualize or debase them by his style.

With the monodic revolution at the beginning of the 17th century the history of oratorio as an art-form controlled by composers has its real beginning. There is nothing but its religious subject to distinguish the first oratorio from the first opera; and so Emilio del Cavaliere’s Rappresentazione di anima e di corpo (1600) is in no respect outside the line of early attempts at dramatic music. In the course of the 17th century the differentiation between opera and oratorio increased, but not systematically. The gradual revival of choral art found its best opportunity in the treatment of sacred subjects; not only because it was with such subjects that the greatest 16th-century choral art was associated, but also because these subjects tended to discourage such vestiges of dramatic realism as had not been already suppressed by the aria form. This form arose as a concession to dire musical necessity and to the growing vanity of singers, and it speedily became almost the only possibility of keeping music alive, or at least embalmed, until the advent of Bach and Handel. The efforts of Carissimi (d. 1674) in oratorio clearly show the limited rise from the musical standards of opera that was then possible where music was emancipated from the stage. Yet in his art the corruption of church music by secular ideas is far more evident than any tendency to elevate Biblical music-drama to the dignity of church music. Normal Italian oratorio remains indistinguishable from serious Italian opera until as late as the boyhood of Mozart. Handel’s La Resurrezione  and Il Trionfo del Tempo contain many pieces almost simultaneously used in his operas, and they show not the slightest tendency to indulge in choral writing. Nor did Il Trionfo del Tempo become radically different from the musical masques of Acis and Galatea and Semele, when Handel at the close of his life dictated an adaptation of it to an English translation with several choral and other numbers interpolated from other works. Yet between these two versions of the same work lies more than half the history of classical oratorio. The rest lies in that specialized German art of which the text centres round the Passion and the music culminates in Bach; after which there is no very dignified connected history of the form, until the two streams, sadly silted up, and never afterwards quite pure, united in Mendelssohn.

One feature of the Reformation in Germany was that Luther was very musical. This had the curious result that, though the German Reformation was far from conservative in its attitude towards ancient liturgy, it retained almost everything which makes for musical coherence in a church service; while the English church, with all its insistence on historic continuity, so rearranged the liturgy that no possible music for an English church service can ever form a coherent whole. We are accustomed to think of German Passion-music as typically Protestant; yet the four Passions and the Historia der Auferstehung Christi of H. Schütz (who was born in 1585, exactly a century before Bach) are as truly the descendants of Victoria’s Passions as they are the ancestors of Bach’s. The difference between them and the Roman Catholic Passions is, of course, eminently characteristic of the Reformation: the language is German (so that it may be “understanded of the people”), and the narrative and dialogue is set to free composition instead of to forms of Gregorian chant, though it is written in a sort of Gregorian notation. Schütz’s preface to the Historia der Auferstehung Christi shows that he writes his recitative for solo voices, though he calls it Chor des Evangelisten and Chor der Personen Colloquenten. The Marcus Passion is, on internal evidence, of doubtful authenticity, being later in style and quite stereotyped in its recitative. But in the other Passions, and most of all in the Auferstehung, the recitative is wonderfully expressive. It was probably accompanied by the organ, though the Passions contain no hint of accompaniment at all. In the