Christmas Music! (Part 1)

This post was written by Joel Buursma, and posted on December 19, 2007 | Filed Under music and religion | Double-click any word for more info | View other posts by Joel Buursma | | For info on this author, visit http://www.sdgmusic.org/voices/2007/08/19/introduction-joel-buursma/

It’s almost a cliche (and perhaps not “almost”), but Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year. Although the added busyness & stress can sometimes be frustrating, there is so much to like. And, for me, following the rich American tradition of only allowing Christmas music to be played between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, it is a time when a certain not insubstantial section of my family’s personal CD collection comes alive. For you, too, perhaps?

So, just for fun, I thought I’d share some of my favorite Christmas music. I’d love to hear favorites from other readers of this blog as well. For this post, I will focus on fine arts music related to Christmas. I hope to devote a separate post to Christmas carols.

Note: I have at times included links to sample recordings online. Please understand that this is simply a convenient way to show sample recordings and neither an advertisement for a music store nor a true review of any recording.

The first thing that comes to mind for me here is Bach’s Christmas Oratorio (Weihnachtsoratorium, BWV 248). As readers may know, it was not composed as an oratorio, but is rather a collection of six cantatas for performance in the days between Christmas and Epiphany. As the cantatas form a sequence that tell the story of Jesus’ early days, it works reasonably well in collected form.

For me, listening to a John Eliot Gardiner recording of the joyful first movement (I adore every Gardiner recording of Bach I have heard) was love at first hearing. I noticed there is a brand new recording of this piece with Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting who has also done so many wonderful Bach recordings.

If you consider Handel’s Messiah to be a Christmas piece, you’re probably not paying close enough attention to it. Or, to be more cordial: you might also include it on this list. Certainly, Messiah performances, both amateur and professional, are widespread Christmas traditions for Christians and even many non-Christians. And the rich collection of Scriptural references brings many Christian truths powerfully to mind in a season of heighten spiritual focus.

I also think of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ smaller oratorio called Hodie, based on Lessons & Carols readings and also English poetry (most notably John Milton’s Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity). I suspect the David Willcocks recording of this work is the classic against which others are judged. The performance is powerful and moving, and I think that Dame Janet Baker’s singing in particular is very memorable. But I see also that there is a new recording with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing.

This work has moments for me that pierce the heart with their beauty and send the soul soaring. The Milton poetry inspires Vaughan Williams to touch on both the fragility and intimacy of the baby in the stable in one tender movement (”It was the Winter wilde”) and the cosmic significance of this momentous birth later in the piece. What a great mystery this juxtaposition is! Vaughan Williams ends the work in triumph with the orchestra going full tilt under these words:

Yea Truth, and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Th’enameld Arras of the Rain-bow wearing,
And Mercy set between,
Thron’d in Celestiall sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down stearing,
And Heav’n as at som festivall,
Will open wide the Gates of her high Palace Hall.

May the music and the message of this season bring home the intimacy and the majesty of this birth to you as well!