Christmas Oratorio

The Christmas Oratorio (German: Weihnachts-Oratorium), BWV 248, 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 now 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 (Picander).

Christmas Oratorio is topical, it’s also universal. It doesn’t require lights or tinsel or presents under the tree to instruct, inspire, and/or entertain, especially if it is presented in as fine a performance as this one fashioned by Stephen Layton and his cohort. Layton is the director of music at Trinity College, Cambridge (having succeeded Richard Marlow), and his choir is top-notch, as is the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, mercifully identified as OAE. OAE’s roster is rife with such familiar names from the period instruments movement as Margaret Faultless (who is just that here) and Alison Bury. To mention Anthony Robson, oboe, and David Blackadder, trumpet, is not to slight any of the other players.

J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio was written for the Christmas season of 1734, and although it incorporates music from earlier works it belongs firmly among his timeless large-scale compositions. The development of the oratorio, which was to become a new musical form in Protestant church services at that time, was stimulated by Bach’s compositions, particularly by the unusual form of his six-part Christmas Oratorio. From its famously joyful opening ‘Jauchzet frohlocket’ to the arrival of the Wise Men from the East, this work’s enduring popularity has long proven its status as a choral ‘evergreen.’

We tend to think of Johann Mattheson (1681–1764) as a theorist first and foremost, and as a composer almost as an afterthought. To be sure, he competed in a world in Hamburg that at one time or another featured Reinhard Keiser, Georg Philipp Telemann, and George Frederick Handel; indeed, all of these were friends, sometimes rivals, and in one case, he and Handel even fought a duel over an opera, Cleopatra (Mattheson would have won, but a metal coat button deflected his sword, fortunately both for posterity and Handel). As a singer, he was well regarded, but by 1705 he had traded his performance chops for a real job as private secretary to the English ambassador.

The recommending word for Philip Pickett and the New London Consort's recording of J. S. Bach's Christmas Oratorio is balance. There is a most satisfying balance on every level of this recording-between singers, between singers and instrumentalists, and between instrumentalists. Pickett mediates between the extreme options for choral forces-one per part at one extreme and a mammoth Romantic-sized choir at the other-by placing several singers on each choral part and drawing his soloists from that choir. Listening to the chorales and chorus movements of Bach's monumental creation will reveal the wisdom of Pickett's decision.

From 1957-1973 Werner recorded 55 of Bach's church cantatas as well as the St. John and St. Matthew Passions, the Christmas, Easter and Ascension Oratorios, the B minor Mass and the motets. MusicWeb stated, 'Werner's pacing of the (St. Matthew Passion) and his vision of it is compelling. The drama moves inexorably forward and the entire story is most movingly related.'

Johann Heinrich Rolle (1716-1785), who worked for more than 30 years as "Director musices" and Cantor at the Altstädtische Gymnasium in Magdeburg, enjoyed great popularity in his day and won. a. important as the founder of the first public concert series in Magdeburg. According to advertisements in the Magdeburger Zeitung, the oratorio was heard in December 1769 and 1771 within this »Rolleschen concert series«, and it has not yet been clarified whether the work was even used as regular church music. The text, of which the poet is unknown, does not describe the events in the field near Bethlehem as usual, but is devoted to religious considerations.
The chamber choir Michaelstein and the Telemann chamber orchestra Michaelstein under the experienced direction of Ludger Remy present this forgotten masterpiece of Central German music.