Christmas cantata. A Christmas cantata or Nativity cantata is a cantata, music for voice or voices in several movements, for Christmas. The importance of the feast inspired many composers to write cantatas for the occasion, some designed to be performed in church services, others for concert or secular celebration. The Christmas story, telling of music of the angels and suggesting music of the shepherds and cradle song, invited musical treatment. The term is called Weihnachtskantate in German, Cantate de Noël in French. Christmas cantatas have been written on texts in several other languages, such as Czech, Italian, Romanian, and Spanish. Christmas cantata can also mean the performance of the music. Many choirs have a tradition of an annual Christmas cantata.
Theme[edit] These themes appear also in cantatas of later composers. History[edit] Many Christmas cantatas – as cantatas in general – were written in the Baroque era for church services, related to the prescribed readings of the liturgical year. BACH- CANTATAS BWV 27, 84, 95 & 161 - HERREWEGHE.wmv. Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4. Christ lag in Todes Banden (Christ lay in death's bonds), also written Christ lag in Todesbanden, BWV 4, is a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. It is one of Bach's earliest cantatas, and was probably intended for a performance at Easter in 1707, related to his move from Arnstadt to Mühlhausen.
John Eliot Gardiner describes the work as Bach's "first-known attempt at painting narrative in music".[1] History and words[edit] Bach composed the cantata for Easter Sunday early in his career; its style implies a date between 1707 and 1713. It shows similarities to a composition of Johann Pachelbel based on the same Easter chorale.[2] Bach revived the work during his time at Leipzig. Publication[edit] Like nearly all Bach's cantatas, the work was unpublished during the composer's lifetime. Words[edit] In contrast to the chorale cantatas that Bach composed in Leipzig, the text of the chorale is kept unchanged.
Scoring and structure[edit] Music[edit] Tune of stanza seven Recordings[edit] References[edit] George Frideric Handel - Un'alma innamorata Cantata HWV173 1/2. Cantata. Historical context[edit] The term originated in the early 17th century simultaneously with opera and oratorio. Prior to that all "cultured" music was vocal. With the rise of instrumental music the term appeared, while the instrumental art became sufficiently developed to be embodied in sonatas. From the beginning of the 17th century until late in the 18th, the cantata for one or two solo voices with accompaniment of basso continuo (and perhaps a few solo instruments) was a principal form of Italian vocal chamber music.[2] A cantata consisted first of a declamatory narrative or scene in recitative, held together by a primitive aria repeated at intervals. Differences from other musical forms[edit] The Italian solo cantata tended, when on a large scale, to become indistinguishable from a scene in an opera, in the same way the church cantata, solo or choral, is indistinguishable from a small oratorio or portion of an oratorio.
Baroque[edit] Classical and romantic period[edit] References[edit]