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A Note from the Artistic Directors
It has been our intention for quite some time for our respective ensembles
[St. Martin's Chamber Choir and the Colorado Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra] to collaborate with each other. The Bach
Christmas Oratorio emerged as the ideal candidate a little over a year ago as we discussed choral/orchestral works we have always wanted to perform. This was near the top of both our lists. The planning began almost immediately, and we are thrilled to see this long process come to fruition in these two concerts.
The Christmas Oratorio was written by Bach for the 1734 Christmas season at St. Thomas’ Church (Lutheran) in Leipzig. It was, astonishingly, not to receive another complete performance until 1857! As such, it has always been the “junior partner” of Bach’s four greatest choral/orchestral masterpieces – at least in non-German-speaking countries. In Germany and Austria it has become the equivalent of our
Messiah, with every church and community choir performing parts or all of it every year. But here in the United States it has always lived in the shadow of the B minor mass and the two Passions. Because of this, as well as its sheer narrative power and the treasury of beautiful melodies that unfolds in piece after piece, we had both been yearning to perform it for a long time.
The Oratorio actually consists of six separate cantatas, each of which was performed on a separate night between Dec. 25 and Jan. 6 (see next paragraph for details). As this mode of performance is quite impractical in the modern day, it is now usually performed on a single night, with extensive cuts made to bring it to under two hours. It was always our intention to perform
every note of the work. Since this would mean over two-and-a-half hours of music, our plan involved cutting repeats rather than entire numbers (Bach used
da capo form a great deal – that is, essentially an ABA structure where the second A is an exact repeat of the first. We have abbreviated the second A section in most cases, such that every note of every movement is still performed, and the overall “feel” of an ABA form is retained, but the second A section is significantly truncated). This, to our mind, is an elegant way of making cuts that retains the overall shape of the work, but brings it into a listenable length of just over two hours – admittedly long, but within reason, we feel.
The first cantata, intended for performance on Christmas Day, describes the birth of Jesus; the second (Dec. 26) is the angels’ appearance to the shepherds; the third (Dec. 27) contains the adoration of the shepherds; the fourth (Jan. 1) describes the Jewish custom eight days after a birth of naming and circumcising a child; the fifth (on the first Sunday after New Year) narrates the journey of the Magi, and the sixth (Jan. 6, the Epiphany) the adoration of the Magi – who, as the first Gentiles to acknowledge Christ, symbolize the Christian Church as a whole. As such, the work takes the listener through the entire Christmas narrative, drawing on both scriptural passages (mostly sung by the Evangelist – a role redolent of a Passion) and related sacred poetry of Bach’s time.
That this is essentially a complete performance of the work makes it a significant event in the Denver area, where – so far as we have been able to determine – it has not been so performed for at least a decade, perhaps longer. Our heartfelt thanks to you our dedicated audiences, all the musicians involved in this project, and the support staff and volunteers without whom such an undertaking would be impossible!
Timothy J. Krueger
& Cynthia Katsarelis
December 2011
© 2011 Timothy J. Krueger |