Stradella’s best known oratorio is his _S. Giovanni Battista_ (about 1676). Its great artistic merit lies in its plastic musical portrayals of the characters of Herod and his daughter, and in the happy use of fiery, dramatic melody to limn them in tone; for as a musical character-painter Stradella may be said to have been Scarlatti’s superior, although his influence on the development of the form was not so great as was that of his contemporary. The romantic details regarding his personal life, many of them undoubtedly apocryphal, which recur in every biography, do not seem to call for consideration here. It is his contribution to the music of the oratorio only with which we are concerned, and in this respect he deserves a place beside Scarlatti. The numerous composers of oratorio who lead from Carissimi, through Scarlatti and Stradella, to Handel and his more immediate German predecessors, have nothing especially new to offer. Scarlatti and Stradella accomplished much in the direction of both musical and purely formal development, but they were unable to establish a distinct line of demarcation between oratorio and opera. Italian oratorio was practically not distinguishable from the Italian _opera seria_ until as late as Mozart’s boyhood. IV Italian oratorio, by reason of its descent from the sacred church dramas and its close association with opera, has never been wholly able to break away from the element of recreation that was so conspicuous in its early use as a means of attracting people to attend church. And the complete separation between the recreational and religious elements did not take place until the oratorio passed out of the land of its birth into Germany, when it fused with the spirit of Passion-music and emerged a distinctly religious art-form. The connecting link between Italian oratorio and Germany was Giovanni Gabrieli, who, as the teacher of Heinrich Schütz, the greatest German musician of the seventeenth century, transmitted to his great pupil not only his technical mastery of the best of Netherland and Italian art-methods, but his own remarkable artistic sincerity and religious earnestness. It was Schütz who, from the different standpoint of Protestant faith as nurtured by the Lutheran Reformation, laid the foundations of modern oratorio.