I'm listening to the Christmas Oratorio, one of Bach's long choral works. My story Christine's Miraculous Christmas is all about this work, from a kid point of view. As you can expect, I love my characters in that story! Kelly is an adorable kid, as are most Altos! Just kidding. A lot of my best friends happened to be Altos.
Oops, time to change the CD ...
I have learned that Bach wrote a Cantata for each Sunday of the year, and trained and conducted the boys' choir to perform the Cantata during the church service. At some times of the year—certainly on Christmas Day, for instance—they had a Cantata for non-Sundays as well. And the cantatas were on the subject appropriate for the season.
Well, Bach decided to compile six of the Christmas-time cantatas, and make an Oratorio of it, and that's how the Christmas Oratorio, known as XO to its friends, was born. He left the work packaged into 6 portions. Each of the six sections—well, they're called cantatas, actually—opens and closes with a full choir chorus. In between, there are brief choral portions, such as when the shepherds talk among themselves, and say "Let's go into Bethlehem!" or something like that. But twelve major choruses there are, as Yoda would say. What there is a lot of, is solos, duets, and one lovely trio! Read all about in Christine.
It's difficult to fully describe the XO. The solos and duets and such items not only describe the action, but also reflect on it (unlike in Handel's Messiah, where all the text is directly from the Bible, and there are no passages that say things like: O how wonderful is our God, or anything like that.) So XO is almost an entire church service, sermon and all. But so beautifully set to music!
Kay
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