The Composition
Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah (Elias in German), Op. 70, was composed in 1846 and premiered at the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival on 26 August 1846, conducted by the composer. It was immediately acknowledged as a triumph, and Mendelssohn - who had been planning an Elijah oratorio since the late 1830s - received an ovation that contemporary accounts describe as unprecedented in Birmingham's musical history. The audience demanded repetition of multiple numbers. The work runs approximately two hours and fifteen minutes and is scored for four soloists (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, bass), chorus, and full orchestra. Mendelssohn revised the work for its German premiere and subsequent publication, and the revised version is the one performed today.
The libretto was compiled by Julius Schubring, a pastor and friend of Mendelssohn, drawing primarily on 1 Kings 17-19 and 2 Kings 2 for the narrative portions, with additional texts from Psalms, Isaiah, Job, and the New Testament (particularly Romans 11's discussion of Elijah's plea that he alone remained faithful to God). The work is in two parts: Part 1 covers the drought, the miracle at Zarephath, the contest on Mount Carmel, and the rain; Part 2 covers Elijah's flight to the desert, the still small voice, the ascent in the chariot of fire, and a final series of choruses and arias looking forward to the coming of Christ.
Biblical Text
The primary biblical source, 1 Kings 17-19, provides one of the most dramatically compelling narratives in all Scripture. Elijah emerges without introduction to pronounce the drought (1 Kings 17:1), sustains a widow's oil and flour miraculously (17:14-16), raises her dead son (17:22), challenges the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel in a contest whose outcome will establish whether the LORD or Baal is God (18:20-40), calls down fire that consumes the sacrifice (18:38), and then, in the wake of triumphant vindication, flees into the desert in despair and suicidal exhaustion (19:3-4).
The still small voice (1 Kings 19:12) - the 'sound of gentle stillness' or 'still small voice' after the wind, earthquake, and fire - is the theological heart of the oratorio's Part 2: God's communication not through the spectacular but through the intimate, a theological corrective to the spectacular fire-from-heaven approach of Part 1. Mendelssohn was drawn to Elijah partly because this narrative of prophetic burnout followed by renewal resonated with his own experience of creative exhaustion and spiritual longing.
The Composer
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) was the grandson of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and was raised in a liberal Protestant household, having converted from Judaism to Christianity. His Jewish heritage gave him a particular identification with the Old Testament prophets; his Protestant training gave him the oratorio tradition of Handel and Bach. The Elijah is the summation of both inheritances: it has the dramatic immediacy of Handel's Israel in Egypt and the counterpoint of Bach, combined with Mendelssohn's own gift for lyric melody and orchestral color.
Mendelssohn died suddenly at the age of thirty-eight in November 1847, just fourteen months after the Birmingham premiere, leaving the Elijah as his final major completed work. The oratorio was thus received from the first as a farewell - a prophetic figure's last testament - which deepened its emotional resonance for Victorian audiences.
Musical Analysis
The oratorio opens with Elijah's prophetic declaration (bass solo) unaccompanied except for a single tonic chord - a moment of stark biblical authority. The orchestral overture that follows depicts the drought in dry, harmonically bare music. The crowd choruses, depicting the Israelites' suffering and later their praise, are among the most exciting choral writing of the nineteenth century, influenced by Handel but with a harmonic richness that is entirely Romantic.
The Carmel scene is the dramatic climax of Part 1. The false prophets' repeated cries 'Baal, hear us!' (eight-part chorus, growing to fff) are met with silence - depicted by a moment of orchestral stillness that is itself a kind of music. Elijah's prayer ('Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, let it be known this day that thou art God') is a bass aria of commanding simplicity, and the fire's descent is marked by a thunderous choral and orchestral moment in which the entire assembled harmonic weight of the oratorio is discharged at once.
The transition to Part 2, with Elijah's 'It is enough' aria in which he asks God to take away his life (a direct setting of 1 Kings 19:4), is Mendelssohn's greatest vocal movement - the prayer of a man who has achieved everything and feels nothing. The soprano quartet 'Lift thine eyes' (setting Psalm 121:1-3) provides consolation, and the angel's arias introduce a tenderness into the work's textures that counterbalances the prophetic thunder of Part 1.
Theological Content
Elijah poses a theological question that it does not fully resolve: what is the relationship between spectacular divine power (the fire on Carmel) and quiet divine presence (the still small voice)? The oratorio suggests that both are genuine modes of divine self-revelation, but that the second is more sustainable and more personally transformative. Elijah's journey from triumph to despair to renewal is a pattern that applies to any serious spiritual life, and the oratorio's enduring popularity in the Victorian era and beyond reflects its capacity to speak to private religious experience within a public choral form.
Performance History
The Elijah became, after Handel's Messiah, the most performed oratorio in the English-speaking world. Its annual performance at the Birmingham Festival and subsequently at choral societies throughout Britain was a fixture of Victorian musical life. It entered the German repertoire somewhat later and has been performed continuously in both languages since.
Notable Recordings
Among landmark recordings are those of Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos (with Fischer-Dieskau as Elijah, New Philharmonia, 1969, DG) and John Eliot Gardiner (with Bryn Terfel, London Symphony, 1993, DG). More recent recordings include those of Daniel Harding (Berlin Philharmonic, 2011) and Simon Halsey's accounts with various British choral societies.
Legacy
Elijah established the dramatic oratorio as a vehicle for personal, psychological religious narrative rather than merely typological biblical storytelling. Its Elijah is a fully human figure - capable of heroism and despair, zealotry and exhaustion - whose spirituality is authenticated by suffering rather than by success. This psychological realism, unusual in nineteenth-century sacred music, made the oratorio a model for subsequent composers and a touchstone for preachers and theologians seeking musical illustrations of prophetic spirituality.