Bach - Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248 - Ac of St Martin in The Fields, King's College Choir, Ph Ledg
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DESCRIPTION: J.S. Bach
Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248
Elly Ameling (soprano )
Janet Baker (alto)
Robert Tear (tenor)
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (bass)
King's College Choir,
Cambridge Academy of St Martin in the Fields
conducted by Philip Ledger
The term 'oratorio' is usually associated with a large dramatic musical work which tells a story - much in the same way as does an opera with arias, recitatives and choruses - and which is performed at one sitting in the concert hall. Oratorios that fit this description include Handel's Messiah, Haydn's Creation and Mendelssohn's Elijah. The Weihnachts-Oratorium (Christmas Oratorio) by Johann Sebastian Bach is certainly dramatic and has an important story to tell but it was never intended to be performed in its entirety in the concert hall.
Bach created his Weihnachts-Oratorium during 1734 for performance in church over the ensuing Christmas period. It consists of six cantatas which between them tell the story of the Navitity and the events of the following week or so. The first of these cantatas, which should be performed on Christmas Day itself, tells how Joseph and Mary travelled from Nazareth to Bethlehem to fulfil the decree of Caesar Augustus and how, when they arrived there, Mary gave birth to the baby Jesus in; a stable, there being no room at the inn. The chorus opens this cantata by exhorting Christians to be joyful and ends it with a lullaby to the new born babe. The cantata for the next day opens with a Pastoral Symphony, thus setting the scene for the story of the shepherds who, while keeping watch over their flocks by night, suddenly saw an angel proclaiming that a Saviour had been born that day in the city of David. Much of the recitative sung in this cantata by the soprano (taking the part of the angel) and the tenor uses the same biblical words that Handel set in the Christmas section of Messiah. During the cantata, for the following day the shepherds make their decision to go to Bethlehem to see the baby Jesus, whom they eventually find lying in a manger. They then return home, glorifying God and telling everyone about the wondrous things they have heard and seen.
As the fourth cantata deals with the naming of the child and his circumcision, which took place when he was eight days old, it should be performed on New Year's Day. The next cantata is intended for the following Sunday and is the one which tells of the three wise men who came to Jerusalem asking where they could find the new-born King of the Jews, for they had seen his star in the East. This request caused King Herod great anguish so he called together all his chief priests and scribes to ascertain where the child could be. In the final cantata, the one for the Feast of the Epiphany, Herod charges the wise men to go to Bethlehem, find the child and then come back with news of his whereabouts, for the King says that he too wishes to go and worship him. The wise men follow their star and when they have found the young child they kneel to worship him and offer him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod they go home another way. At the end of this cantata the chorus sings - to the same chorale melody that was heard in the first cantata - of how sin, death, hell and the devil have all been vanquished now that God has sent his Son to earth.
When the Christmas Oratorio was performed in Leipzig for the first time at the end of 1734 and the beginning of 1735, Bach had been working in that city as Cantor at the St Thomas School for nearly twelve years. He had arrived in Leipzig on 22 May 1723 and had immediately taken up his duties at the school and at the city's two major churches, the Thomaskirche and the Nikolaikirche. These duties included providing a regular supply of new cantatas, both sacred and secular. Apart from the weekly church services and the Saints' Days, there were civic occasions that required festal music and royal birthdays that needed to be celebrated in musical terms. It seems that the people of Bach's time were less interested in hearing repeated performances of tried and tested compositions than in listening to new compositions by tried and tested composers.
Sometimes, however, audiences and congregations would have noticed that Bach was in the habit of recycling his material and, in particular, that music from his secular cantatas would often reappear in his sacred ones. In the Christmas Oratorio, for example, Bach made use of two secular cantatas - Hercules aufdem Scheidewege (BWV123), which was written for the birthday of Prince Friedrich Christian of Saxony on 5 September 1733, and Tonet, ihr Pauken! Erschallet Trompeten! (BWV214), composed for the birthday of the Electress Maria Josepha on 8 December 1733. Indeed, the trumpets and drums in the opening chorus of the Christmas Oratorio bear witness to its origins in BWV214 whose title translates as 'Sound the drums, ring out the trumpets'.
The first performances of the six cantatas which make up Bach's Weihnachts-Oratorium were given on the appropriate days (25, 26 and 27 December 1734, 1, 2 and 6 January 1735) in the two main Leipzig churches. The complete cycle was given at the church of St Nicholas and all but parts three and five at that of St Thomas. Those attending would have been doing so as part of their regular pattern of worship, not as if going to a concert, and they would also have been encouraged to join in the various chorales.
© PETER Avis, 1996
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