Tag Archives: BWV 248/4

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.

New Year’s treasures

31 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by in Cantatas, Christmas, Leipzig

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newyearseve
the author on New Year’s Eve, 1970s

There are many Bach cantatas for New Year’s Day, or the Feast of the Circumcision and naming of Jesus. Apart from the fourth cantata of the Christmas Oratorio I discuss here, those are: BWV 190 from 1724, BWV 41 from 1725, BWV 16 from 1726, and BWV 171 from 1729. They are all impressive, usually with trumpets and timpani in the orchestra, but rarely get performed anywhere. I hope that will change sometime.

Today is also the first Sunday after Christmas. If that day did not fall on Third Christmas Day, Bach would write a cantata for that too, as you can see in this overview. It means there is an overwhelming treasure trove of cantatas to choose from today.

The ones I like best are cantata 122 Das neugeborne Kindelein (for the first Sunday after Christmas in 1724) and the fourth cantata from the Christmas Oratorio Fallt mit Danken, fallt mit Loben (for New Year’s Day or the Feast of the Circumcision and naming of Jesus in 1735).

Listen to Herreweghe’s recording of cantata 122 Das neugeborne Kindelein on YouTube. It’s only 14 minutes long, but contains so many jewels. With soprano Vasiljka Jezovsek (stunning performance in the recitative), alto Sarah Connolly, tenor Mark Padmore, and bass Peter Kooij. I love every part of this cantata, but as a child I was most excited about the choruses: they still sounded like pretty Christmas music, but talked about the New Year!

Find the text of cantata 122 here, and the score here.

For Herreweghe’s interpretation of the 4th cantata from the Christmas Oratorio Fallt mit Danken, fallt mit Loben you have two options: There is a beautiful CD recording from 1989, which you can purchase here. Soloists on this recording are soprano Barbara Schlick, tenor Howard Crook, and bass Peter Kooij.

There is also a wonderful DVD recording from 2013, with soloists Dorothee Mields, countertenor Damien Guillon (not singing in part 4), tenor Thomas Hobbs, and bass Peter Kooij. I can highly recommend watching this. This DVD is available at ArkivMusic, Barnes and Noble, and can also be streamed on Amazon Prime.

Find the text of cantata 4 from the Christmas Oratorio here, and the score here.

I love this part of the Christmas Oratorio the best, because of the moving bass-soprano duet, the trio sonata disguised as a tenor aria with two violins, the famous echo-aria for soprano, and of course because it has horns in the orchestra! The presence of horns in the orchestra is the reason this cantata is often skipped in concert performances of the Christmas Oratorio. The entire oratorio is a bit too long for a regular concert program, there are no horns required in any of the other five parts, and natural horn players are expensive and hard to find, so presenters can save on production costs by not hiring any horn players at all.

By the way: Bach never intended for the Christmas Oratorio to be performed as a whole. He wrote each cantata for the six consecutive church Holidays in 1734/1735: First Christmas Day, Second Christmas Day, Third Christmas Day, New Year’s Day (or Feast of the Circumcision), Sunday after New Year, and Epiphany, and the separate cantatas were performed during the church services on those days. The music for the oratorio was largely based on existing choruses and arias from secular works. In this case of the fourth cantata, the opening chorus, soprano aria, and tenor aria all come from BWV 213 Laßt uns sorgen, laßt uns wachen aka Hercules at the Crossroads written in 1733 for the 11th Birthday of Prince Friedrich Christian, son of the Elector of Saxony.

I wish you a good 2017!

Wieneke Gorter, December 29, 2016, links updated December 28, 2019.