Author Description

The University of North Carolina Press is proud to announce new paperback editions of Howard Smithers ground-breaking four-volume A History of the Oratorio, available as a paperback set for the first time. Published as UNC Press Enduring Editions, these volumes bring Smithers landmark scholarship to a new generation of readers and scholars.Written by an eminent scholar in a style that represents American musicological writing at its communicative best, A History of the Oratorio offers a synthesis and critical appraisal so exhaustive and reliable that the serious student of the oratorio will be compelled to look to these volumes as an indispensable source. No work on the history of the oratorio has yet appeared in the English language that is comparable in scope and treatment with Smither's comprehensive four-volume work.Volumes 1 and 2, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 1977, treated the oratorio in the Baroque era, while Volume 3, published in 1987, explored the genre in the Classical era. The final volume, Volume 4, published in 2000, surveys the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century oratorio, stressing the main geographic areas of oratorio composition and Germany, Britain, America, and France.A History of the Oratorio is the first full-length history of the genre since Arnold Schering published his Geschichte des Oratoriums in 1911. In addition to synthesizing current thought about the oratorio, these volumes contribute new information on relationships between oratorio librettos and contemporary literary and religious thought, and on the musical differences among oratorios from different geographical-cultural regions.