The Mason County journal. [volume] (Shelton, W.T.) 1886-1927, 1890-01-31
MODERN oRArORlo.
The Place 1t Occupies Defined by Rev.
III. X. Haweis

The Place 1t Occupies Defined by Rev.
HI. X. Haweis.
Atpresent, standing out in the world il
looks back into the church from whence
it came. 1t is midway between the con-
cert-room and the stage. 1t is not Sc
verely hymnal nor strictly devotional.
but it abounds in meditation and praise
1t is not theatrical, but it is dramatic
and at times quite scenic, as when Con
nod puts his Day of Judgment and trum-
pets up in the ceiling. 1t is not re-
ligious function, yet it is now often
heard in the cathedral. 1t is s.the palm
branch offered by the church to the
ballad-singer on the one side and the
actor on the other. In the best and
highest sense it is the meetinp-place
and common platform of the church and
the world"
But it can not stop there The dra-
matte elements sarg ng within the ora
torio are even now struggling for more
direct expression. The tendency of the
age is toward eclecticism, not in the bad
sense of throwing together little bits Of
different things that can never be weld
ed into whole, but in the higb-art.
Wagnerian sense of welding together a
vast number of artistic products which
have patiently been worked out apart.
but are now drdaon together by the at
traction of a higher unity.
The suggestion of dramatizing sacred
subjects, or fitting sacred thoughts and
situations with stage scenery as we'll as
music, still seems scandalOus to some
devout minds. But this feeling will
probably subside when the antagonism
between religion and the stage is seen
to be accidental and not radical, while
the objection has been actually over
come at least in one striking instance.
No one, whatever his previous feeling
against it may have been, ever went to
the performances at Oberammergau
without being converted. To play Judas
Iscariot or Pontius Plate might seem
allowable at stretch, but to personate
Jesus on the cross seemed to MANY be-
yOnd the utmost limits of reverence and
decency. But the simple peasant who
had prepared himself by devout habits
as well as by physical discipline for
that strange function at once contrived
to disarm criticism. Many sincere
Christian has owned that, familiar as he
had been from childhood with the divine
tragedy recOunted in Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John, he had never appre-
hended 1T in all its deep and terrible re-
atty until he visited the open-air per-
Torrance at Oberommergau. The crit
ical point of dramatizing the sacred
scenes which form the subject of ora
torio has thus been generally conceded.
| The application alone remains to be
made. 1t is this: the creation of a new
art form which will enable us to write,
in addition to sacred drama, sacred
musac drama. Now, it may be said we
have stretched point for the drama;
we admit the possibility of it's conse-
Grafton. The Oberammergau play lin
eally and uninterruptedly comes from
the miracle plays and moralities of the
sanctuary. The line of its descent is
pure. The sacred drama has never been
corrupted by secular associations,
but when you come to the mu-
steal drama, the case is different
Music may have accompanied the
mOralities in church, but music has al
ways been hopelessly secular and pro-
fame in connection with the drama ont
Of church, You can not reunite them
in any sacred music drama without call
ing up the most unseemingly associa-
tiOns of ballet, prima donna, and general
! love-making and pantomime. This SEN
timent is respectable, no doubt, but it is
illogical. just as many people were
dead against the Obermmergau play till
they saw it. so great many people were
dead against Wagner's great semi-sacred
musical drama called Parsifal till they
saw and heard it. The glamour of medi-
@val fantasy and Catholic legend just
saved it from open decunciation, but we
can all remember the doubtful shudder
which ran through some art circles, as a
rule not Over-squeamish, and all religi-
GUS lotteries when it was proposed to put
the Lords Last Supper on the stagel
1rue, Parsifal does not do quite that,
but it is next door to it. The associa-
| tiOns are there, the function is there,
the communicates are there, even the
scenic suggestion of our Lord himself
is there, and an incident in His life
finds expression in the person of Parsi-
fal and the woman Kundry. who, in the
hour of her penitence, bathes his feet
with tears, and wipes them with the
hair of her head; and yet no one who
has seen Parsifal comes away without
! the most reverent sympathy for this
ideal representation of all that was
most pure and elevating in medieval
Roman Catholicism.-Rev. II. r. Haweis,
M. A., in Harper's Magazine.