oratorio

American  

[awr-uh-tawr-ee-oh, -tohr-, or-] / ˌɔr əˈtɔr iˌoʊ, -ˈtoʊr-, ˌɒr- /

noun

• oratorios
  plural

1. an extended musical composition with a text more or less dramatic in character and usually based upon a religious theme, for solo voices, chorus, and orchestra, and performed without action, costume, or scenery.

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oratorio British  

/ ˌɒrəˈtɔːrɪəʊ /

noun

1. a dramatic but unstaged musical composition for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, based on a religious theme

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oratorio Cultural  

1. A musical composition for voices and orchestra, telling a religious story.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• oratorios
  plural

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Etymology

Origin of oratorio

1625–35; < Italian: small chapel < Late Latin ōrātōrium oratory ²; so named from the musical services in the church of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Rome

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Explanation

An oratorio is a musical piece that is usually lengthy and based on some Biblical or religious event. It is a performance for voice and orchestra, but the story is told through the music, and not with scenery, costumes, and action. In Rome, musical services were presented in the church of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. An oratory, from the Latin word oratorium, meant "place of prayer." These sorts of musical services spawned the type of music known as oratorios. Handel's Messiah is a well known oratorio that is often performed at Christmas. You are probably familiar with the part that goes "Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!"

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

oratorio oratorios

The Pulitzer that Marsalis won in 1997 for his two-and-a-half-hour jazz oratorio, “Blood on the Fields,” was historic: since the jury started honoring music in 1943, they’d never recognized jazz, only classical composers.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 24, 2026

Harry Bicket and the English Concert presented the composer’s highly theatrical but little-known 1745 oratorio in an uneven but frequently arresting performance.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 18, 2026

Phil artist collaborator, began a three-year Handel festival with a dazzlingly sung and played performance of the oratorio “Triumph of Time and Disillusion.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 10, 2025

The latter was an example of how the overuse of this overwrought oratorio made it perfect fodder for parody, and the humor of juicing something comedic with its uber-seriousness.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2025

This contemporary lithograph lampoons the panicked gentry who fled the city - and thus turned Handel’s new oratorio, Theodora, into a box-office flop.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall

George Frideric Handel wrote some 42 operas across his career — his unstaged oratorios such as “Messiah” constitute a separate category — but Seattle Opera has presented only three of these to date.

From Seattle Times ● Sep. 6, 2023

It joins Wolfe’s body of large-scale, historically minded works that lean toward oratorios — what the National Public Radio journalist Tom Huizenga recently called, to Wolfe’s delight, “docu-torios.”

From New York Times ● Sep. 16, 2022

Their next recording, scheduled for release this fall, is a lineup of numbers from Handel oratorios titled “Eternal Heaven.”

From New York Times ● Aug. 12, 2022

But common to both tellings, as well as the dozens of operas, oratorios, plays and films since derived from the myth of Iphigenia, is that she’s not the one who gets to tell the story.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 2, 2021

Handel’s first eighteen oratorios in London theatres were packed- house affairs.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall

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