Oratorio credited with writing the first English language oratorio, "Esther". Handel's imitators included the Italian Lidarti who was employed by the Amsterdam Jewish community to compose a Hebrew version of "Esther". Britain continued to look to Germany for its composers of oratorio. The Birmingham Festival commissioned various oratorios including Felix Mendelssohn's "Elijah" in 1846, later performed in German as "Elias". German composer Georg Vierling is noted for modernizing the secular oratorio form. John Stainer's "The Crucifixion" (1887) became the stereotypical battlehorse of massed amateur choral societies. Edward Elgar tried to revive the genre around the turn of century with the composition
Elijah Bashyazi a treatise on astronomy. (6) "Melitzat ha-Mitzvot" (The Precepts in Verses), imitated from the "Azharot" of Solomon ibn Gabirol. This was published in the Karaite siddur, ed. Vienna, ii. 175. Bashyazi wrote also many prayers which were embodied in the Karaite prayer-book (ed. Vienna, iii. 226). Elijah Bashyazi's great-grandson was Moses ben Elijah Bashyazi, who was also a Karaite scholar. Elijah Bashyazi Elijah ben Moses Bashyazi of Adrianople or Elijah Bašyazi (in Hebrew, Eliyahu ben Moshe ben Menahem) (c. 1420 in Adrianople – 1490 in Adrianople) was a Karaite Jewish hakham of the fifteenth century. After being instructed in the