With the oratorio, religious music emancipated itself from the liturgy in the 17th century and made a new appearance in the emerging concert hall. Oratorios - the word comes from orare (to pray) - were originally invented in Rome (see, for example, the oratorios by Giacomo Carissimi) because operas were not allowed to be performed in the Papal States during Lent. Handel discovered the form of the oratorio in Rome and later transferred it to England, where he developed it to mastery at a time when his operas were no longer successful or profitable in London.

Jephta is Handel's last oratorio, composed in 1751, and tells the biblical story from the Book of Judges (11:30-40), in which Jephta (Jiftach) finds himself in a tragic situation because he had promised to sacrifice the first living creature he met after the victorious battle to God. It was his daughter. A cruel and tragic story that goes back to the original myth of the sacrifice of firstborns and thus slipped into the Bible.

Handel went blind in 1751, like J.S. Bach a year earlier. Handel combines his tragic situation of going blind with this biblical tragedy, especially in this chorus ‘How dark’ from Act 2 of the oratorio.
It is not a pious prayer at the end of the act, it ends with a resigned final moral, which, however, is so musically self-conjuring that one doubts whether this resigned consolation is coherent. As if someone is trying to convince themselves of something, the phrase ‘What ever is, is right’ is repeated over and over again. It is a situation in which the view of God and of a successful life is obscured.

Listen here (approx. 8 minutes)!

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