‘Elijah.’--Mendelssohn waited a full ten years after the performance of ‘St. Paul’ before he produced another oratorio on such broad lines and when ‘Elijah’ appeared in 1846, the world recognized that it was an event that transcended in importance any similar event since Handel’s ‘Messiah.’ ‘Elijah’ is certainly Mendelssohn’s finest and most sustained flight and there are not wanting those critics who stoutly maintain that it is unsurpassed in the whole literature of oratorio. In it the composer enters new paths. He gives full rein to the intensely dramatic side of the text and freely departs from the conventional form of oratorio--so much so that the work might safely be called a sacred opera. ‘Elijah’ was long in the composer’s mind and he worked on it carefully and with profoundest affection and sympathy, for although he had embraced Christianity, there was something about the heroic character of the old Hebrew militant prophet that struck deep into the fibres of his being. Work on it was begun as early as 1840, but he did not earnestly begin the composition of the music (the text he compiled largely himself) until 1845. It was first performed at the Birmingham Festival on August 26th, 1846, when Mendelssohn conducted it before an enormous audience which extended to the composer one of the most thrilling ovations ever enjoyed by a musician. Though its success was most extraordinary, Mendelssohn was not deterred from carefully revising it. It is interesting to note that the universally popular ‘angels’ trio’ (‘Lift thine eyes’) was originally written for only two voices.