He dispensed with the narrator and directed his attention to placing the speeches of his personages before the auditor in the most direct, dramatic, and characteristic manner. He used the choruses as Handel did, to impersonate the mass of people. He employed the chorales exactly as Bach did, to signify the thought of the Church as it had come to be understood in Germany. His scenes are all arranged in dramatic form, and without doubt could be placed upon the stage effectively if the whole feeling of contemporaneous audiences were not opposed to that method of giving oratorio. His characters are drawn clearly and sharply. Indeed, there is no oratorio in which the musical characterization is so finely worked out. The contrasts between the choruses of the priests of Baal and the Jews are sufficient evidence of this. But everywhere throughout the score there is evidence of a consistent and successful effort to adapt to the production of a powerfully dramatic, yet specifically Protestant and German, oratorio, the most influential elements of the forms of Handel and Bach, together with Haydn's instrumental coloring. The very beginning of the oratorio strikes a new note, and one of tremendous dramatic power. Three broad chords are followed by the portentous prophecy of Elijah, "As God the Lord of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." After that single passage, set to a style of recitative wholly different from that of either Bach or Handel, yet containing some of the qualities of both, follows the overture, a piece of music descriptive of the misery of the land of drought. Thenceforward everything moves dramatically. The people cry, "Help, Lord; wilt Thou quite destroy us?" Then they beseech, "Lord, bow Thine ear to our prayer." Obadiah calls them to repentance with warning and with the lovely air, "If with all your hearts ye truly seek me." Later an angel comes and commands Elijah to go to Cherith's brook, and then follows the double quartet, "For He shall give His angels," a new employment of Bach's commentary chorus. The episode of Elijah and the widow is treated with dramatic directness, and is followed by the commentary chorus, "Blessed are the men who fear Him."