Welsh composer Ralph Vaughan Williams composed two major works for Christmas. Neither is neglected, though they haven’t achieved the same level of popularity as the A-list of holiday Art Music. The first is the Fantasia on Christmas Carols, which is on the B-list because the carols selected are not top-40 (perhaps 41-80?)
The second is the oratorio Hodie, which includes biblical texts along with poetry and hymns – not unlike Bach’s own Christmas Oratorio and the cantatas of Protestant Germany. Today I’ve selected the first movement of the oratorio – the movement after which the complete work gets its name. This piece absolutely tickles me, because it is the closest to Leonard Bernstein that Vaughan-Williams’ music ever gets (though it doesn’t get very close …). Vaughan-Williams composed in a very conservative style, so a movement like this with changing dance rhythms and meters is about as wild as he can get. How wild? Like wearing a tuxedo and … unbuttoning your jacket! Or maybe wearing an country suit to a city supper.
Amid a sea of Nutcrackers, Messiahs, and TV specials, one of the best Christmas pieces gets lost in the mix. Bach‘s Christmas Oratorio is a piece which, while not ignored, does not get the recognition it deserves. It is overshadowed even by Bach’s own Advent & Christmas music (namely, Wachet Auf and the Magnificat.)
The Oratorio is actually six different cantatas strung together into one longer work. The six cantatas were not originally performed all at once; instead, they were spread apart and performed as part of six separate church services marking the important feast days of the Christmas season. Nowadays, they are almost exclusively heard as one large concert work.
Here is the opening chorus, “Jauchzet, frohlocket!” Merry Christmas!
Did you ever hear a piece and think, I know this tune, but these aren’t the words I’m used to?
Marc-Antoine Charpentier‘s Messe de Minuit (Midnight Mass for Christmas) is a French baroque mass which uses Christmas Carols that would have been recognized by any French person in the 17th / 18th century. The idea of singing different words to familiar tunes was by no means a new idea, and is a practice that continues today (for Americans, the most famous example of this is our national anthem, whose original words were for an English club for musicians – that is to say, drunken amateur musicians.)
French fashion … yeah …
Anyway, whether or not you recognize any of these French carols, the music is quite catchy, largely because of its origin as secular song. Charpentier, like a good Frenchman of the old monarchy of puffy wigs and silly shoes, makes exquisite, elegant work out of everyday melodies.
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