the chapel, or oratory, of his church in Rome,
for popular hours with his congregation. His main object being "to
allure young people to pious offices and to detain them from worldly
pleasure," he endeavored to make the occasions attractive as well as
edifying, and supplemented religious discourse and spiritual songs with
dramatized versions of Biblical stories provided with suitable music.
Associated with him in his labors for a good cause, was no less a
composer than that great reformer of Catholic church music, Giovanni
Pierluigi Sante da Palestrina, whose harmonies were declared by a
music-loving Pope to be those of the celestial Jerusalem. The laudable
enterprise proved successful. People flocked from all quarters to enjoy
the gratuitous entertainments, and a form of sacred musical art resulted
that derived from them its name.

Roswitha, a nun of the Gandersheim cloister, in the tenth century, made
the earliest attempt recorded to invest church plays with artistic
worth. Her six religious dramas, written in Latin for the use and
edification of her sister nuns, were published in a French setting, in
1845. It was a woman, too, Laura Guidiccioni, a brilliant member of the
Florence group of aristocratic truth-seekers in art, who wrote the text
of the first religious musical dramatic composition to which the name
oratorio became attached. It was set to music of a declamatory style by
Emilio del Cavalieri, the author's collaborator in the pastoral plays
that were really embryo operas. The title of the piece, "The
Representation of the Body and the Soul," indicates the allegorical
nature of the subject.

Its initial performance occurred at Rome, February, 1600, in the oratory
of San Filippo's church, Santa Maria della Vallicella. The composer had
died some months earlier, but his minute stage directions were
accurately observed. Behind the scenes was placed an orchestra
comprising a double lyre, a harpsichord, a large guitar and two flutes,
to which was added a violin for the leading part in the ritornels, that
is, instrumental preludes and interludes. The chorus had seats assigned
on the stage, but rose to sing, employing suitable movements and
gestures. Time, Morality, Pleasure, and other solo characters bore in
their hands musical instruments and seemed to play as they acted and
declaimed their parts, while the playing actually came from the
concealed instruments. The World, the Body and Human Life illustrated
the tr