in the Italian music, a sort of sacred drama of dialogues; containing recitatives, duettos, trios, ricercaros, choruses, &c. The subjects of those pieces are usually taken from scripture, or the life of some saint, &c. The music for the oratorios should be in the finest taste and best chosen strains. These oratorios are greatly used at Rome in the time of Lent, and of late in England.

Menefrier attributes the origin of oratorios to the crusades, and says that the pilgrims returning from Jerusalem and the Holy Land, &c. composed songs, reciting the life and death of the Son of God, and the mysteries of the Christian faith, and celebrating the achievements and constancy of saints and martyrs. Others, with more probability, observe, that the oratorio was an avowed imitation of the opera, with only this difference, that the foundation of it was always some religious, or at least some moral subject. Crefcimbieni ascribes its origin to San Filippo Neri, who was born at Florence in 1515, and who, in his chapel, after sermons, and other devotions, in order to allure young people to pious offices, had hymns, psalms, and such like prayers, sung by one or more voices. Among these spiritual songs were dialogues; and these entertainments becoming more frequent, and improving every year, were the occasion that in the seventeenth century oratorios were first invented, so called from the place of their origin. See Hawkins's History of Music.