Elijah (oratorio) Austrian bass Joseph Staudigl. Mendelssohn had discussed an oratorio based on Elijah in the late 1830s with his friend Karl Klingemann, who had provided him with the libretto for his comic operetta "Die Heimkehr aus der Fremde", which resulted in a partial text that Klingemann was unable to finish. Mendelssohn then turned to , the librettist for his earlier oratorio "St. Paul", who quickly abandoned Klingemann's work and produced his own text that combined the story of Elijah as told in the Book of Kings with psalms. In 1845, the Birmingham Festival commissioned an oratorio from Mendelssohn, who worked with
Paul Jacobs (composer) Paul Jacobs (composer) Paul Ross Jacobs is an American composer and musician. Paul Ross Jacobs was born in New York City. He attended the Juilliard School and as a child, played at Carnegie Hall, on television and for Radio Free Europe. After watching The Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show", he started playing guitar. He worked as a session musician during his high school years and later on with Meat Loaf, Roy Buchanan, and Edgar Winter. Jacobs' association with the National Lampoon came through Christopher Guest, who had written a large chunk of the first National Lampoon album, "Radio Dinner".