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
St Peter and St Paul, Checkendon St Peter and St Paul, Checkendon St Peter and St Paul is the Church of England parish church of Checkendon, a village in Oxfordshire, England. Its parish is part of the Diocese of Oxford. Its earliest parts are 12th-century and it is a Grade I listed building. The church is a Norman building. All but one of the windows were replaced later in the Middle Ages with Decorated Gothic and Perpendicular Gothic ones, and the Perpendicular Gothic west tower is also a later addition. An active church in the Church of England, the Church of St Peter and St Paul