he direction of oratorio,
in which all the more attractive elements came from his innovations.
Carissimi was a prolific composer, having constant occasion for new
and pleasing attractions for the musical service of the rich and
important Jesuit church, where he held his appointment. These
compositions are of every sort, but cantatas form the larger portion,
consisting of passages of Scripture set in consecutive form, with due
alternation of solo and chorus, in a style at once pleasing and
dramatically appropriate. The majority of his compositions have been
lost, many of them going to the waste paper baskets when the Jesuits
were suppressed. Enough remain, however, to indicate the interest and
importance of his work. Moreover, there, is another curious commentary
upon the value of his music, in the fact that Haendel took twelve
measures well nigh bodily out of one of the choruses in Carissimi's
"Jephthah," and incorporated them in "Hear Jacob's God" in his own
"Samson." Mr. Hullah gives an excellent aria from this work, but it
is too long for insertion here. The more important of Carissimi's
innovations were in the direction of pleasing qualities in the
accompaniments, and agreeable rhythms. He was teacher of several of
the most important Italian musicians of the following generation,
among them being Bassani, Cesti, Buononcini and Alessandro Scarlatti.

[Illustration: Fig. 47.

HEINRICH SCHUeTZ.]

II.

The other type of oratorio received important assistance toward full
realization in Germany, at the hands of Mattheson, as already noticed,
and from those of Heinrich Schuetz (1585-1672), who, after preliminary
studies in Italy, where he acquired the Italian representative style
from Gabrieli in Venice, in 1609, three years later returned to
Germany, and in 1615 was appointed chapel master to the elector of
Saxony, a position which he held with slight interruptions until his
death, at the advanced age already indicated. Notice has already been
taken in a former chapter of his appearance in the field of opera
composition, in setting new music to Rinuccini's "Dafne," on account
of the German words being incapable of adaptation to the music of
Peri. But before this he had demonstrated his versatility and talent
in the production of certain settings of the psalms of David, in the
form of motettes for eight and more voices. In his second work, an
oratorio upon the "Resurrection," he shows the same striving after a
free