Christmas Oratorio

History

In the liturgical calendar of the German reformation era in Saxony, the Christmas season started on 25 December (Christmas Day) and ended on 6 January (Epiphany). 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 (Nativity of Christ) and Epiphany (Visit of the Magi) the period also included New Year's Day (1 January), in Bach's time still often referred to as the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ. Also 26 and 27 December (second and third day of Christmas) 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 (second Sunday after Christmas, or: first Sunday after New Year).

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:

Before his Leipzig period he composed, as part of his Weimar cantata cycle:

Christmas, 25 December 1714: Christen, ätzet diesen Tag, BWV 63.

First Sunday after Christmas, 30 December 1714: Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn, BWV 152.

For the 1723–24 Christmas season, during his first year as musical director of Leipzig's principal churches:

Christmas Day: repeat performance of BWV 63, which thus became part of his first cantata cycle, and, as part of the Latin Church music he composed for Leipzig, his Magnificat, BWV 243a (version with Christmas interpolations) and Sanctus in D major, BWV 238.

Second Day of Christmas: Darzu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes, BWV 40.

Third Day of Christmas: Sehet, welch eine Liebe hat uns der Vater erzeiget, BWV 64.

New Year's Day: Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 190.

Second Sunday after Christmas (2 January): Schau, lieber Gott, wie meine Feind, BWV 153.

Epiphany: Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen, BWV 65.

For the 1724–25 Christmas season, as part of his chorale cantata cycle (except for the Latin Sanctus):

Christmas Day: Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ, BWV 91 (early version), and Sanctus for six vocal parts, BWV 232/III (early version).

1730s

In the early 1730s, Bach composed a number of secular cantatas, including:

So kämpfet nur, ihr muntern Töne, BWV 1160, on a libretto by Picander, first performed on 25 August 1731 (music lost, apart from later versions of the opening chorus).

Laßt uns sorgen, laßt uns wachen, BWV 213 (Hercules at the Crossroads), on a libretto by Picander, performed on 5 September 1733.

Tönet, ihr Pauken! Erschallet, Trompeten!, BWV 214, performed on 8 December 1733.

Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen, BWV 215, performed on 5 October 1734.

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.

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" ("O Sacred Head, Now Wounded"). The same melody reappears in the last movement of the oratorio (No. 64, closing chorale of Part VI). 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 in 2009 by English musician Sting:

Text

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 (the pen name of Christian Friedrich Henrici) 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 (with the notable exception of the recitatives), 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 ("Er ist auf Erden kommen arm") and even more ingeniously in the recitatives nos. 38 and 40 which frame the "Echo Aria" ("Flößt, mein Heiland"), 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:

Birth and Annunciation to the Shepherds

The Adoration of the Shepherds

Prologue to the Gospel of John

Circumcision and Naming of Jesus

The Flight into Egypt

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 (27 December), 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:

The Birth

The Annunciation to the Shepherds

The Adoration of the Shepherds

The Circumcision and Naming of Jesus

The Journey of the Magi

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 (referring to the Shepherds) is, by contrast, scored for woodwind instruments and does not include an opening chorus. Part IV is written in F major (the relative key to D minor) 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 (even to 'One Voice Per Part') may however choose to use numbers approaching one instrument per named part.

Part I

3 trumpets, timpani, 2 transverse flutes, 2 oboes (both of which double on oboe 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 (both of which double on oboe 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 (both of which double on oboe d'amore), 2 violins, viola, continuo

Notes

Parts and numbers

Each section combines choruses (a pastoral Sinfonia opens Part II instead of a chorus), chorales and from the soloists recitatives, ariosos and arias.

By notational convention the recitatives are in common time.

Reception

In Göran Tunström's 1983 Swedish novel Juloratoriet (The Christmas Oratorio) and its 1996 film version, Bach's work is important for the leading characters.

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

The 2024 German-Austrian TV film Bach – Ein Weihnachtswunder [Bach – A Christmas Miracle] tells a fictional story about the creation of the Christmas Oratorio in the context of local politics and domestic conflicts in the Bach family.