Christmas 2014

Christmas 2014

December 22, 2014.  Christmas of 2014.  We wish all our listeners a Merry Christmas, a holiday joyous to all music lovers, whether religious or not.  We traditionally celebrate it with Johann The Nativity, Domenico GhirlandaioSebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.  A six-part work lasting about three hours, it was written for the Christmas season of 1734, but incorporates several cantatas and other music written earlier.  The first part of the cantata describes the birth of Jesus.  Here are movements 5 through 9, the final movements of part one.  It starts with a Chorale, the tenor recitative of the Evangelist follows, then another Chorale, then a Bass aria and the finale Chorale to the words of Martin Luther.  This portion of Christmas Oratorio is performed by the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists under the baton of Sir John Eliot Gardiner.  The picture on the left is by the great Italian master Domenico Ghirlandaio.  It was painted in 1492 and these days it hangs in the Pinacoteca museum in Vatican.  Note that the angels seem to need the sheet music to properly sing Gloria in excelsis Deo -- or maybe they invite us to sing along.