I'm a lucky, lucky girl. I know not what presents I'll be receiving this year (not that it really matters, since to think of Christmas time as "the-season-of-gifts-and-parties-galore" is quite un-Christian and completely misses the point of this season of Grace) ... but I have no need of any when I already had the rare opportunity to listen to the ENTIRE Christmas oratorio performed LIVE. I never had the chance to listen to it before the MMCO BACHxes project, but because I sat in most of the rehearsals I was able to familiarize myself with the work in its entirety.
I won't go into an indepth analysis of the music, of the complex harmonies/fugues side by side simple yet majestic chorale pieces. But for those who are unfamiliar with the work, here's a short intro from an online review of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields recording:
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.
A performance of Bach's Weihnachtsoratorium in our country is a breath of fresh air from the season's usual Messiah by Handel. Both are towering works of genius in their own right; they are both capable of "transporting" their listeners through an internal pilgrimage of sorts. But my spiritual journey through the Bach has been more profound.
I would be sitting in my chair, exhausted after a long day of attending my classes in the morning and rehearsing with the orchestra in the concert venue, still feeling the effects of not having enough sleep because of a rehearsal the night before... but as soon as the music started, all the exhaustion melted away. The world itself vanished, and I was in another time, a better place. Immersion in the music brought me to a holy plane. I could SEE the events unfolding in my mind's eye as we joyfully sang of his birth and what it meant for mankind. There were moments during the performance itself that I felt I was was positively glowing with ecstasy!!! Especially as the choir sang the last piece, with the marvelous trumpet solo that brought to mind 1 Corinthians 15:52 :
The triumph is completed,
Our Saviour, Christ the Lord
has vanquished and defeated
the Fiend and all his horde.
Sin, Death and Hell and Satan
the Faithful may defy,
God summons His elected
to Him in Heaven High.
I fully agree with what Bernard Labadie and Lucie Rinaud said in their article on the Weihnachtsoratorium:
"At the end of these six cantatas, listeners will feel as though they've been on a journey and completed an itinerary, rather than having heard a sequence of movements...
The Christmas Oratorio... was a truly operatic expression of faith for the Christian of Bach's time. Therein lies its strength today: it doesn't try to convert the world, but touches a deep human chord that vibrates forever."
Merry Christmas everyone!
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