The Origin The Origin The Origin is an opera/oratorio composed by Richard Einhorn to a libretto by Richard Einhorn and Catherine Barnett based on the writings of Charles Darwin. The oratorio takes its title from Darwin's 1859 "On the Origin of Species". The work was commissioned by the Artswego program and the Music Department of State University of New York at Oswego for the worldwide Darwin Bicentennial. "The Origin" had its world premiere on 6 February 2009 at the university's Waterman Theatre. The premiere performance of "The Origin" was conducted by Julie Pretzat and featured soprano Jacqueline Horner from the a cappella
On the Origin of Species an incipient species" and that "species are only strongly marked and permanent varieties". He argues for the ubiquity of variation in nature. Historians have noted that naturalists had long been aware that the individuals of a species differed from one another, but had generally considered such variations to be limited and unimportant deviations from the archetype of each species, that archetype being a fixed ideal in the mind of God. Darwin and Wallace made variation among individuals of the same species central to understanding the natural world. In Chapter III, Darwin asks how varieties "which I have called incipient species"