Return to Heaven with Bach’s Birth of Christ

Weihnachts Oratorium or The Christmas Oratorio is an usual piece broken into chapters like an unfolding narrative story. Written by famed German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach in 1734, the six cantatas were created for a Christmastide audience, and it has perhaps survived as a classic of the festive winter season for its inherent story-like quality, progressing like a play. Lengthy as it may be it was, in fact, meant to be played across six days. Beginning on Christmas Day, the first part, with its jubilant trumpeted introduction of choral revelry, announces The Birth of Christ. The flutes take the lead in the second part, The Adoration of The Shepherds, as an angel appears to the humble men and their flocks, guiding them towards Bethlehem. This would have been played on the day after Christmas, St. Stephen’s Day, a public holiday in Bach’s native Germany. The third part, a return to jubilation on St. John’s Day, tells of the shepherd’s arrival to gaze upon Christ in the manger. On New Year’s Day, Bach intended the fourth part to be played, marking The Naming of Christ. As described in Luke 2:21, “And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called Jesus, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” On the Second Sunday after Christmas, the fifth part tells of the wise men who followed the star from their foreign kingdoms, a journey poet T.S. Eliot lyrically narrated in a 1927 series of verses — “Just the worst time of the year / For a journey, and such a long journey / The ways deep and the weather sharp / The very dead of winter. / And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory / Lying down in the melting snow.” Lastly, is The Adoration of the Magi, a piece which concludes with Mary, Joseph and Jesus’ Flight to Egypt from The Gospel of Matthew, as depicted with glowing, nighttime intensity in the 1627 Dutch Golden Age oil painting by Rembrandt, a 1614 oil by Rubens, and many others.

Crescendo will perform “Resonet In Laudibus – Resounding Joyful Praises” Renaissance and Baroque holiday music for chorus and brass at Trinity Lime Rock Church in Lakeville, Conn., on Dec. 11.