Christmas Oratorio


The Christmas Oratorio, , is an oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach intended for performance in church during the Christmas season. It was written for the Christmas season of 1734 and incorporates music from earlier compositions, including three secular cantatas written during 1733 and 1734 and a largely lost church cantata, BWV 248a. The date is confirmed in Bach's autograph manuscript. The next performance was not until 17 December 1857 by the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin under Eduard Grell. The Christmas Oratorio is a particularly sophisticated example of parody music. The author of the text is unknown, although a likely collaborator was Christian Friedrich Henrici.
The work belongs to a group of three oratorios written in 1734 and 1735 for major feasts, the other two works being the Ascension Oratorio and the Easter Oratorio. All three of these oratorios to some degree parody earlier compositions. The Christmas Oratorio is by far the longest and most complex work of the three.
The Christmas Oratorio is in six parts, each part being intended for performance on one of the major feast days of the Christmas period. The piece is often presented as a whole or split into two equal parts. The total running time for the entire work is nearly three hours.
The first part describes the Birth of Jesus, the second the annunciation to the shepherds, the third the adoration of the shepherds, the fourth the circumcision and naming of Jesus, the fifth the journey of the Magi, and the sixth the adoration of the Magi.

History

In the liturgical calendar of the German reformation era in Saxony, the Christmas season started on 25 December and ended on 6 January. It was preceded by Advent, and followed by the period of the Sundays after Epiphany. It included at least three feast days that called for festive music during religious services: apart from Christmas and Epiphany the period also included New Year's Day, in Bach's time still often referred to as the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ. Also 26 and 27 December were commonly considered feast days, with festive music in church. If a Sunday fell between 27 December and 1 January, also on this first Sunday after Christmas a church service with music was held, and similar for a Sunday between 1 and 6 January.

1714–1729

Before Bach composed his Christmas Oratorio for the 1734–35 Christmas season in Leipzig, he had already composed Christmas cantatas and other church music for all seven occasions of the Christmas season:
Four of these third cycle cantatas for the Christmas season, BWV 110, 57, 151 and 16, were on a text from Georg Christian Lehms's Gottgefälliges Kirchen-Opffer cantata libretto cycle, which had been published in 1711. In the second half of the 1720s Bach often collaborated with Picander as a librettist for his cantatas. The Shepherd Cantata, BWV 249a, first performed on 23 February 1725, one of Bach's secular cantatas, is an early example of such cantata. Bach reused the music of this cantata in the 1725 first version of his Easter Oratorio. Ihr Häuser des Himmels, ihr scheinenden Lichter, BWV 193a, composed in 1727, is another secular cantata on a text by Picander which was, shortly after its first performance, reworked into a sacred cantata. In 1728–29 Picander published a cantata libretto cycle, leading to at least two further Christmas season cantatas by Bach:
A Christmas oratorio presented as a cycle of six cantatas, to be performed on several days during the Christmas period, was not uncommon in Bach's day: Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, whose church music was not unknown to Bach and Leipzig churchgoers, had composed such Christmas oratorios in 1719 and 1728.

1730s

Models from earlier compositions

In the early 1730s, Bach composed a number of secular cantatas, including:
Movements from the BWV 213, 214 and 215 cantatas form the basis of several movements of the Christmas Oratorio. In addition to these sources, the sixth cantata is based on a largely lost church cantata, BWV 248a, of which at least the opening chorus is based on the lost secular cantata BWV 1160. The trio aria in Part V "Ach, wenn wird die Zeit erscheinen?" is believed to be from a similarly lost source, and the chorus from the same section "Wo ist der neugeborne König" is from the 1731 St Mark Passion, BWV 247.
CantataMovementTypeBWV 248Movement
BWV 213/1Lasst uns sorgen, lasst uns wachenChorus 36 Fallt mit Danken, fallt mit Loben
BWV 213/3Schlafe, mein Liebster, und pflege der RuhAria 19 Schlafe, mein Liebster, genieße der Ruh
BWV 213/5Treues Echo dieser OrtenAria 39 Flößt, mein Heiland, flößt dein Namen
BWV 213/7Auf meinen Flügeln sollst du schwebenAria 41 Ich will nur dir zu Ehren leben
BWV 213/9Ich will dich nicht hörenAria 4 Bereite, dich, Zion
BWV 213/11Ich bin deine, du bist meineDuet 29 Herr, dein Mitleid, dein Erbarmen
BWV 214/1Tönet, ihr Pauken! Erschallet, TrompetenChorus 1 Jauchzet, frohlocket, auf, preiset die Tage
BWV 214/5Fromme Musen! meine GliederAria 15 Frohe Hirten, eilt, ach eilet
BWV 214/7Kron und Preis gekrönter DamenAria 8 Großer Herr, o starker König
BWV 214/9Blühet, ihr Linden in Sachsen, wie ZedernChorus 24 Herrscher des Himmels, erhöre das Lallen
BWV 215/7Durch die von Eifer entflammten WaffenAria 47 Erleucht auch meine finstre Sinnen
BWV 247/43Pfui dich, wie fein zerbrichst du den TempelChorus 45 Wo ist der neugeborne König der Juden
BWV 248a/1—Chorus 54 Herr, wenn die stolzen Feinde schnauben
BWV 248a/2—Recitative 56 Du Falscher, suche nur den Herrn zu fällen
BWV 248a/3—Aria 57 Nur ein Wink von seinen Händen
BWV 248a/4—Recitative 61 So geht! Genug, mein Schatz geht nicht von hier
BWV 248a/5—Aria 62 Nun mögt ihr stolzen Feinde schrecken
BWV 248a/6—Recitative 63 Was will der Höllen Schrecken nun
BWV 248a/7—Chorus 64 Nun seid ihr wohl gerochen
?—Trio 51 Ach! wann wird die Zeit erscheinen?

Chorales

Like for most of his German-language church music, Bach used Lutheran hymns, and their Lutheran chorale tunes, in his Christmas Oratorio. The first chorale tune appears in the 5th movement of Part I: it is the tune known as Herzlich tut mich verlangen, that is, the same hymn tune which Bach used in his St Matthew Passion for setting several stanzas of Paul Gerhardt's "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden". The same melody reappears in the last movement of the oratorio. In the oratorio there is, however, no association with the pain and suffering evoked in the Passion.
Martin Luther's 1539 "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her" melody appears in three chorales: twice on a text by Paul Gerhardt in Part II of the oratorio, and the first time, in the closing chorale of Part I, with the 13th stanza of Luther's hymn as text. A well-known English version of that stanza is "Oh, my dear heart, young Jesus sweet", the first stanza of "Balulalow", as, for instance, sung by Sting:
The Christmas Oratorio is exceptional in that it contains a few hymn settings, or versions of hymn tunes, for which there is no known earlier source than Bach's composition:
There are very few known hymn tunes by Bach : apart from what can be found in the Christmas Oratorio, there appears to be one, partly inspired by a pre-existing melody, in the motet Komm, Jesu, komm, BWV 229, and at least one entirely by Bach, "Vergiss mein nicht, vergiss mein nicht", BWV 505, in Schemellis Gesangbuch.

Gospel narrative

Like for his other oratorios, and his Passion settings, Bach employed a narrative based on the Gospel in his Christmas Oratorio. The Gospel narrative of this oratorio followed, to a certain extent, the respective Gospel readings of the church services where the six cantatas of the Christmas Oratorio were to be performed for the first time. The six services of the Christmas season 1734–35 where the oratorio's cantatas were to be performed had these Gospel readings:
  1. Christmas Day: .
  2. Second Day of Christmas: .
  3. Third Day of Christmas: – prologue of the Gospel of John, also known as Hymn to the Word.
  4. New Year's Day:
  5. Sunday after New Year:
  6. Epiphany:
As usual in most of his oratorios, and all of his Passions, the Evangelist character enunciated the Gospel text in sung recitatives, except the passages in direct speech, which were sung by soloists or choral groups representing the characters who spoke these texts according to the Gospel narrative. The Gospel text included by Bach in his six Christmas Oratorio cantatas consists of:
  1. , i.e. part of the Christmas Day reading.
  2. , i.e. second half of the Christmas Day reading.
  3. , i.e. text of the Second Day of Christmas Gospel reading.
  4. , i.e. the New Year's Day Gospel reading
  5. , i.e. part of the Gospel reading for the Epiphany feast
  6. , i.e. second half of the Gospel reading for Epiphany
The Gospel readings for the Third Day of Christmas, and for the Sunday after New Year are not directly used in the Christmas Oratorio. In detail:

First performance

The oratorio was written for performance on six feast days of Christmas during the winter of 1734 and 1735. The original score also contains details of when each part was performed. It was incorporated within services of the two most important churches in Leipzig, St. Thomas and St. Nicholas. As can be seen below, the work was only performed in its entirety at the St. Nicholas Church.
First performances:
The ease with which the new text fits the existing music is one of the indications of how successful a parody the Christmas Oratorio is of its sources. Musicologist Alfred Dürr and others, such as Christoph Wolff have suggested that Bach's sometime collaborator Picander wrote the new text, working closely with Bach to ensure a perfect fit with the re-used music. It may have even been the case that the Christmas Oratorio was already planned when Bach wrote the secular cantatas BWV 213, 214 and 215, given that the original works were written fairly close to the oratorio and the seamless way with which the new words fit the existing music.
Nevertheless, on two occasions Bach abandoned the original plan and was compelled to write new music for the Christmas Oratorio. The alto aria in Part III, "Schließe, mein Herze" was originally to have been set to the music for the aria "Durch die von Eifer entflammten Waffen" from BWV 215. On this occasion, however, the parody technique proved to be unsuccessful and Bach composed the aria afresh. Instead, he used the model from BWV 215 for the bass aria "Erleucht' auch meine finstre Sinnen" in Part V. Similarly, the opening chorus to Part V, "Ehre sei dir Gott!" was almost certainly intended to be set to the music of the chorus "Lust der Völker, Lust der Deinen" from BWV 213, given the close correspondence between the texts of the two pieces. The third major new piece of writing, the sublime pastoral Sinfonia which opens Part II, was composed from scratch for the new work.
In addition to the new compositions listed above, special mention must go to the recitatives, which knit together the oratorio into a coherent whole. In particular, Bach made particularly effective use of recitative when combining it with chorales in no. 7 of part I and even more ingeniously in the recitatives nos. 38 and 40 which frame the "Echo Aria", no. 39 in part IV.
Until 1999 the only complete English version of the Christmas Oratorio was that prepared in 1874 by John Troutbeck for the music publisher Novello. A new edition has been worked up by Neil Jenkins.

Narrative structure

The structure of the story is defined to a large extent by the particular requirements of the church calendar for Christmas 1734/35. Bach abandoned his usual practice when writing church cantatas of basing the content upon the Gospel reading for that day in order to achieve a coherent narrative structure. Were he to have followed the calendar, the story would have unfolded as follows:
  1. Birth and Annunciation to the Shepherds
  2. The Adoration of the Shepherds
  3. Prologue to the Gospel of John
  4. Circumcision and Naming of Jesus
  5. The Flight into Egypt
  6. The Coming and Adoration of the Magi
This would have resulted in the Holy Family fleeing before the Magi had arrived, which was unsuitable for an oratorio evidently planned as a coherent whole. Bach removed the content for the Third Day of Christmas, John's Gospel, and split the story of the two groups of visitors—Shepherds and Magi—into two. This resulted in a more understandable exposition of the Christmas story:
  1. The Birth
  2. The Annunciation to the Shepherds
  3. The Adoration of the Shepherds
  4. The Circumcision and Naming of Jesus
  5. The Journey of the Magi
  6. The Adoration of the Magi
The Flight into Egypt takes place after the end of the sixth part.
That Bach saw the six parts as comprising a greater, unified whole is evident both from the surviving printed text and from the structure of the music itself. The edition has not only a title—Weihnachts-Oratorium—connecting together the six sections, but these sections are also numbered consecutively. As John Butt has mentioned, this points, as in the Mass in B minor, to a unity beyond the performance constraints of the church year.

Music

Bach expresses the unity of the whole work within the music itself, in part through his use of key signatures. Parts I and III are written in the keys of D major, part II in its subdominant key G major. Parts I and III are similarly scored for exuberant trumpets, while the Pastoral Part II is, by contrast, scored for woodwind instruments and does not include an opening chorus. Part IV is written in F major and marks the furthest musical point away from the oratorio's opening key, scored for horns. Bach then embarks upon a journey back to the opening key, via the dominant A major of Part V to the jubilant re-assertion of D major in the final part, lending an overall arc to the piece. To reinforce this connection, between the beginning and the end of the work, Bach re-uses the chorale melody of Part I's "Wie soll ich dich empfangen" in the final chorus of Part VI, "Nun seid ihr wohl gerochen"; this choral melody is the same as of "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden", which Bach used five times in his St Matthew Passion.
The music represents a particularly sophisticated expression of the parody technique, by which existing music is adapted to a new purpose. Bach took the majority of the choruses and arias from works which had been written some time earlier. Most of this music was 'secular', that is written in praise of royalty or notable local figures, outside the tradition of performance within the church.

Instrumentation

The scoring below refers to parts, rather than necessarily to individual players. Adherents of theories specifying small numbers of performers may however choose to use numbers approaching one instrument per named part.
;Part I: 3 trumpets, timpani, 2 transverse flutes, 2 oboes, 2 oboes d'amore, 2 violins, viola, continuo group
;Part II: 2 flutes, 2 oboes d'amore, 2 oboes da caccia, 2 violins, viola, continuo
;Part III: 3 trumpets, timpani, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 oboes d'amore, 2 violins, viola, continuo
;Part IV: 2 horns, 2 oboes, 2 violins, viola, continuo
;Part V: 2 oboes d'amore, 2 violins, viola, continuo
;Part VI: 3 trumpets, timpani, 2 oboes, 2 oboes d'amore, 2 violins, viola, continuo
;Notes

Parts and numbers

Each section combines choruses, chorales and from the soloists recitatives, ariosos and arias.
By notational convention the recitatives are in common time.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Reception

The first English-language monography on the Christmas Oratorio was published in 2004. It was a translation of a 2002 Dutch-language study by.

Recordings

Cited sources

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