Christmas cantata
A Christmas Cantata is a cantata for Christmas. The special significance of the festival led many composers to write cantatas for the occasion, which were designed partly for performance in worship, partly for concerts. The Angels concert of the Christmas story and elements of their decoration as pastoral music and lullaby gave rise to musical creativity.
History
The Christmas cantata flourished in the baroque, composed as Italian composers such as Arcangelo Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti for Catholic services, Johann Sebastian Bach and Gottfried Heinrich Stolzel for Lutheran church services. Christmas Cantatas were in this era also composed by Antonio Caldara, Marc- Antoine Charpentier, David Pohle, Christian Friedrich Ruppe and Johann Christoph Schmügel.
Examples of romanticism are Mendelssohn Vom Himmel hoch, a chorale cantata, based solely on Luther's Christmas song, and Josef Rheinberger's The Star of Bethlehem to a text of his wife Frances of Hoffnaaß. Christmas Cantatas were also composed by John Victor Bergquist, Friedrich Theodor Fröhlich, Rudolf Herold, Philipp Christoph Kayser, Mathilde Kralik, Justus Wilhelm Lyra, Adalbert active house and Josef Venantius von Woss.
In the 20th century, Benjamin Britten composed in 1942 a series of Christmas carols, A Ceremony of Carols. After the Second World War, Rudolf Mauersberger wrote for the Dresden Cross Choir, which he headed, a little Christmas cantata. Ralph Vaughan Williams composed Hodie, and Arthur Honegger wrote as his last work for the Basel Chamber Choir and its founder Paul Sacher, the cantata Une cantate de Noël. , Beginning with the 130th Psalm and used Christmas carols. Christmas Cantatas were also composed by Steve Dobrogosz, Klaus Hashagen, Hans Uwe Hielscher, John Job, Ivana Loudová, Günther Marks, Rudolf Mors, Peter Seeger, Henry Simbriger, Ernst Ludwig Uray, Klaus Wüsthoff ( Christmas Cantata for Young People, Christmas cantata ).
In the 21st century Christmas cantatas were written by Toshio Hosokawa and Graham Waterhouse among others. The Japanese and the English composer set to music German texts, the cantata text The beginning of a new age of Hans Krieger goes back to notions of Angelus Silesius.
Topic
Bach's Christmas Oratorio consists of six parts, each of which is complete in itself and was designed for a service instead of the cantata. Bach structured the narrative of the evangelists who makes the connection between the parts, in six subjects. In Parts I to IV, he followed the Gospel of Luke ( Lk 2.1 2.3 to 21 LUT LUT), in parts V and VI of the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 2:1-12 EU). So he departed from in some cases of worship lectionary in Leipzig and followed the tradition of the older Christmas histories, such as the Historia the birth of Christ by Heinrich Schütz and others.
- Part I for the first Christmas Day (25 December): Birth
- Part II for the 2nd Christmas Day (December 26 ): Annunciation to the shepherds, Glory to God, peace on earth
- Part III for the 3rd Christmas Day (December 27 ): Adoration of the Shepherds
- Part IV for New Year (1 January, Feast of the Circumcision of Christ): naming
- Part V of the First Sunday after New Year's Day: Journey Of The Magi from the East
- Part VI of Epiphany ( January 6): Adoration of the Magi
These themes appear, weighted differently, in many of the later cantatas by other composers. Gottfried Heinrich Stolzel composed for the Christmas season 1736/37 a similar scale work of six cantatas.
Selected cantatas
In the table abbreviations are used for the filling: S = soprano, mezzo-soprano MS = A = Alt, T = tenor, baritone Bar =, B = Bass, KI = Children's Choir, Str = string, = Instr instruments. For the abbreviations of individual instruments, the table of Bach cantatas applies.