Jephte or Historia di Jephte is an important exemplar of the mid-17th-century Historia Sacra form composed by

Giacomo Carissimi (Gian) Giacomo Carissimi (; baptized 18 April 160512 January 1674) was an Italian composer and music teacher. He is one of the most celebrated masters of the early Baroque or, more accurately, the Roman School of music. Carissimi established the ...

around 1650 (probably 1648), based on the story of

Jephtha Jephthah (pronounced ; he, יִפְתָּח, ''Yīftāḥ''), appears in the Book of Judges as a judge who presided over Israel for a period of six years (). According to Judges, he lived in Gilead. His father's name is also given as Gilead, ...

in the

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

Book of Judges The Book of Judges (, ') is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. In the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, it covers the time between the conquest described in the Book of Joshua and the establishment of a kingdom i ...

. The work follows what is considered the classic early Baroque oratorio form with a Biblical text related by soloists and

chorus Chorus may refer to: Music * Chorus (song) or refrain, line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse * Chorus effect, the perception of similar sounds from multiple sources as a single, richer sound * Chorus form, song in which all verse ...

linked by a

narrator Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the a ...

. The only known contemporaneous score is for organ continuo alone though this is sometimes augmented in performance by violins and string bass, for which some support exists in other works by the composer. A 1976 version exists arranged by

Hans Werner Henze Hans Werner Henze (1 July 1926 – 27 October 2012) was a German composer. His large oeuvre of works is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as t ...

for 7 solo voices, 6 part chorus, flutes, percussion and plucked strings.

References

* A History of the Oratorio, vol. 1, Howard E. Smither, 1977 * The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, 1996, * Concise History of Western Music, ch. 9 * Performance practice: a dictionary-guide for musicians, Roland John Jackson, p67 * "Two problems in Carissimi's oratorio Jephte", Janet Beat, Music Review 34 (1973) 339-43 * Carissimi's Tonal System and the Function of Transposition in the Expansion of Tonality, Beverly Stein, The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Spring, 2002), pp. 264–305 {{Authority control Oratorios

See also

References