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 Gordon (composer) Paul Gordon (composer) Paul Howard Gordon is a composer of popular songs and music for the theatre. Gordon composed the music and lyrics for the stage musical "Jane Eyre" which ran on Broadway in 2000–2001, for which he received a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Original Score. The musical was later produced by TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts in Mountain View, California, in 2003. Of this production, the "talkinbroadway.com" reviewer wrote: "The music of Paul Gordon fits this production like a glove, with unbroken strings of music and lyrics that give the audience