Tag Archives: BWV 248/1

Merry Christmas!

25 Saturday Dec 2021

Posted by in Cantatas, Chorale cantatas 1724/1725, Christmas, Following Bach in 1725, Köthen, Leipzig

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Merry Christmas! My sincere apologies if you are somewhere in the world where it is not Christmas Morning anymore.

I have two new videos for you today, that will last you until January 6, just in case I don’t manage to write another blog post between now and then.

The J.S. Bach Foundation has released all six cantatas of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio to YouTube. They released these on CD and DVD for purchase last year, but have now made them available to everyone. You can find that video recording here.

What is even better: they also made the effort to provide English subtitles for Rudolf Lutz’ lecture about Part I of the Oratorio, for Christmas Day. You can find that video here. I highly recommend watching this to better understand the meaning of the music, to learn how Bach reworked some of his secular cantatas into this Oratorio, and that he perhaps planned to do that all along.

There is also a good video of parts I, II, III, and VI of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio by Bach Akademie Stuttgart. The setting in which they perform is less festive looking than the beautiful Baroque church of the J.S. Bach Foundation, but it’s also well done. You can find it here.

If you would like to read and listen more, here’s an overview of my previous blog posts for this First Christmas Day:

Our Christmas Morning, from 2016, talks about how my mother used to wake my sister and me up with Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.

Three Days of Christmas, from 2017, gives you the three cantatas Bach wrote in 1724, all three brand-new, no reworking there.

My own favorite post is Bach and the Christmas Day Message, from 2019, about Cantata 110 from 1725.

And my post from last year is Angels – We Can Use Some This Week, in which I highlight one of the 1724 cantatas.

Happy listening and watching! And please let me know if any of the links don’t work.

Wieneke Gorter, December 25, 2021.

Angels — we can use some this week

25 Friday Dec 2020

Posted by in Cantatas, Chorale cantatas 1724/1725, Christmas, Leipzig

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Hugo van der Goes, Portinari Altarpiece, detail of the center panel foreground, c. 1476, oil on wood. Uffizi galleries, Florence, Italy.

It has been hard to read the newspapers this week and not be touched or even completely floored by human suffering. That’s why Cantata 91 Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ (from 1724) is like a warm bath to me. The two horns in the orchestra already make my day, but there is also a strong presence of angels in the text and music of this cantata.

Watch a wonderful live registration of this cantata on YouTube by the J.S. Bach Foundation, with Monika Mauch, soprano; Margot Oitzinger, alto; Bernhard Berchtold, tenor; and Peter Kooij, bass.

Find the text and translations here, and the score here.

In the opening chorus (with the ascending scale of fast notes), Bach illustrates the “host of angels” singing, or, as Eduard van Hengel says, even “flapping their wings.”

Last year I already talked about how in most of his cantatas for Christmas Day, Bach focuses on Jesus’ journey from the godly realm, the heavenly glory, to being a struggling man on earth. It is very moving then to hear this following text in the bass solo. And it is a true Christmas present to me that it is Peter Kooij who is singing this on the J.S. Bach Foundation video, because he is one of the best to interpret texts like these. Note how Bach illustrates the “Jammertal” (vale of sorrow) at the end.

O Christenheit!
Wohlan, so mache die bereit,
Bei dir den Schöpfer zu empfangen.
Der grosse Gottessohn
Kömmt als ein Gast zu dir gegangen.
Ach, lass dein Herz durch diese Liebe rühren;
Er kömmt zu dir, um dich for seinen Thron
Durch dieses Jammertal zu führen.		 O Christendom!
Come now, prepare yourself
to welcome the creator amongst you.
The mighty Son of God
has descended and comes to you as a guest.
Ah, let your heart be moved by this love;
He comes to you, in order to lead you
through this vale of sorrow to his throne.

In the beautiful soprano-alto duet (arguably the best part of this cantata), Bach brilliantly illustrates the contrast between the human suffering and the heavenly angels. He sets the suffering parts of the text to chromatic lines, similar to those just introduced on that word “Jammertal” in the bass solo. To the heavenly angels he gives happy, dotted rhythms.

While I grew up waking up to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio on Christmas Day (read more about this tradition here), these days I much prefer listening to all the other, earlier cantatas Bach wrote for the period between from December 25 to January 6. However, there are two new video projects of the Christmas Oratorio just out or about to be launched this year that I don’t wish to ignore, so for those of you eager to watch and listen to any of that, here’s my one-paragraph overview:

Bach never intended this oratorio to be performed on one day. The Christmas Oratorio consists of six cantatas that were each meant to be performed on a different Sunday or holiday: First Christmas Day, Second Christmas Day, Third Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Sunday after New Year, and Epiphany. The J.S. Bach Foundation in Switzerland recently released all six cantatas for free on their YouTube channel. You can find the list of videos, one for each cantata, here. If you enjoy watching these videos, please consider donating to the organization so they can continue to pay their musicians and produce these wonderful registrations. Voces8’s excellent “Live from London Christmas” paid programming features all six cantatas performed by The Gabrieli Consort & Players under the direction of Paul McCreesh. Appropriately, each cantata will go live on the day for which it was intended. You can purchase this series here.

Wieneke Gorter, December 24, 2020

Our Christmas Morning

24 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by in Cantatas, Christmas, Leipzig

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nativity_c_1490
Nativity at Night by Dutch painter Geertgen tot Sint Jans, ca. 1490. National Gallery, London.

Growing up in the Netherlands, my sister and I did not expect gifts at Christmas, and certainly not under the tree. We had already received our gifts on the eve of St. Nicholas, December 5. At the dinner with relatives on Christmas Day, we would maybe receive one book, or a small piece of jewelry. It would be well coordinated between mother and grandmother that this would amount to only one present per person, and it would be next to our plate when we arrived at the extremely well-dressed Christmas dinner table.

However Christmas Morning was something we immensely looked forward to. The Christmas Morning breakfast was the most wonderful breakfast of the year, even better than the Easter breakfast. We would have crispy rolls from the oven, artisan sliced ham, boiled eggs, cheese, jams, and of course the sweet breakfast sprinkles American kids can’t believe Dutch kids get to eat for breakfast. And Kerststol, or Christmas Stollen, a fruit bread with an almond paste filling.

There was an unwritten rule that my parents would set out the breakfast (including my father carving a bell or Christmas tree out of the butter) and us kids would stay in bed until my mom would sound the special alarm. And the special alarm was: Harnoncourt’s recording of the opening chorus of Part One of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio at full volume, the sound of the timpani rocking the whole house. I usually play the Herreweghe recording in my own house nowadays. You can find that here on YouTube.

In 2012, Herreweghe’s performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in Brussels was recorded and released on DVD. It is a beautiful registration, and has some of my favorite soloists: Dorothee Mields, soprano; Damien Guillon, alto; Thomas Hobbs, tenor; and Peter Kooij, bass. For my readers in Germany, and countries not to far from there, you can buy the regular DVD here, or the blu ray version here. For readers in the USA, if you have Amazon Prime, you can stream it here.

Read more about the history of Christmas in Europe and the USA in this extremely interesting article and join me again tomorrow for a cantata for Second Christmas Day.

Wieneke Gorter, December 24, 2016, links updated December 24, 2019.