Elijah (oratorio) Elijah (oratorio) Elijah (), Op. 70, MWV A 25, is an oratorio written by Felix Mendelssohn. It premiered in 1846 at the Birmingham Festival. It depicts events in the life of the Biblical prophet Elijah, taken from the books 1 Kings and 2 Kings of the Old Testament. This piece was composed in the spirit of Mendelssohn's Baroque predecessors Bach and Handel, whose music he loved. In 1829 Mendelssohn had organized the first performance of Bach's "St Matthew Passion" since the composer's death and was instrumental in bringing this and other Bach works to widespread popularity. By contrast, Handel's oratorios
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