Reception
As the handiwork of an American composer, The Oratorio of Daniel reflects the highest credit to our country in the realms of art, and there are few, if any, composers in Europe at the present day who are capable of writing anything equal to it.
is by far the most masterly work that an American composer has yet produced, and we judge it will rapidly make its way into the accepted repertory.... That it is a remarkable opus and destined to bring the author's name prominently into the list of those whom we delight to term ‘great living composers’ seems clear enough.
Several reviewers compared the work favorably to Mendelssohn's Elijah. Thirty years later the American Art Journal summed up opinion of this work in Bristow's obituary:
Bristow's oratorio of Daniel is unquestionably one of the most important compositions in this form yet produced by an American composer... From the production of this great work dates a new era in our musical history.
This evaluation gains added significance in light of the large number of popular, well-written works that were produced by Americans during the latter half of the nineteenth century: Horatio Parker's Hora novissima (1892) and Legend of St. Christopher (1897), John Knowles Paine's St. Peter (1872) as well as his Mass in D (1867–68), and Amy Beach's Mass in E-flat (1891).
Complete article available at http://www.albany.edu/music/docs.music/materials/Bristow1.pdf
Bristow's The Oratorio of Daniel has been published in full score form by A-R Editions in its "Recent Researches in American Music" series
Read more about this topic: George Frederick Bristow
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