| Duncan Saunderson, conductor The Instruments of Time and Truth Louise Wayman, soprano Alexander Chance, countertenor Tom Kelly, tenor Brian McAlea, bass |
The Christmas Oratorio by J.S. Bach (1685-1750) is a series of cantatas originally written to be performed in the two most important churches in Leipzig on six different days between Christmas 1734 and the feast of Epiphany in 1735. It incorporates some of the finest movements of several secular cantatas that Bach had already written as birthday or other celebrations. (This performance featured cantatas 1-3 only; cantatas 4-6 will be performed at our concert in January 2017).
‘Nisi Dominus’, a magnificent polyphonic setting for ten voices of Psalm 127, is from Monteverdi’s grand masterpiece, the Vespers of 1610.
‘Plorate filii Israel’ is from Historia di Jephte, Carissimi’s most widely known oratorio. The work dramatizes the Old Testament tale of Jephthah, a warrior of Gilead who is forced to sacrifice his only daughter to God in recompense for his victory over the Ammonites. The scholar Athanasius Kircher wrote in 1650 of this chorus that it was composed ‘with such skill that you would swear you could hear their sobbings and lamentations’.