Christmas is just around the corner

Camille Saint-Saëns was just 23 years old when he composed his “Oratorio de Noël.” It comes as no surprise that, at the same time, the young composer was working on arrangements of several of Bach’s cantatas for piano. Thus, the parallels to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio are evident not only because of the subtitle “Dans le style de Séb. Bach.” However, unlike Bach, the French composer has the Christmas story told by several evangelists and focuses exclusively on the Catholic liturgy.

The renaissance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music is owed above all to its rediscovery by the young Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. “Every word calls for music, just as every verse is a different piece,” Mendelssohn said of the cantata “Vom Himmel hoch.” In “Verleih uns Frieden gnädiglich,” he gives deep musical expression to humanity’s never-ending longing for peace, drawn from the ancient Gregorian chant “Da pacem Domine.”