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
Paul Burkhard Paul Burkhard Paul Burkhard (21 December 1911 in Zürich – 6 September 1977 in Zell) was a Swiss composer. He primarily wrote oratorios, musicals and operettas. The contemporaneous and similarly named Swiss composer Willy Burkhard was no relation to him. Probably his most famous artistic creation was the song "" ("Oh! My Pa-Pa") about the death of a beloved clown-father, written for the musical ' (re-issued in 1950 as ') that premiered in April 1939. The song rose to #1 on the Sheet Music Chart and stayed in the chart for 26 weeks. The song has been performed and recorded