Music and Divine Encounter in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio

Christmas and music seem to belong together. Corelli’s Christmas Concerto, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, and the Christmas sections from Handel’s Messiah are an integral part of the public and private soundscapes between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. They belong to the feast like roasted chestnuts and peppermint sticks. The soothing sound of the Baroque pastoral and the festive splendor of concertomovements from the first half of the eighteenth century seem to capture the Christmas spirit and are often appreciated even without a deeper knowledge of classical music. What is more, Christmas is probably the only Christian feast that has developed its own unmistakable musical idiom: triple meter, simple texture, slow harmonic rhythm, organ points—these are not only the ingredients for a musical pastoral but they likewise characterize a wide array of popular Christmas songs, from “In dulci jubilo” to “Silent Night.”