Johann Sebastian Bach: Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248) (review)

Ignace Bossuyt notes that there has hitherto been no monograph on Bach's Christmas Oratorio in either Dutch or English, so his new study fills a surprising gap in the literature, and offers many opportunities to introduce fresh perspectives into Bach studies. Of the existing German studies, Walter Blankenburg's short monograph remains indispensable, and much of his theologically based approach lies behind this new study.

Bossuyt cannot be faulted for his trawl through much recent literature on the oratorio (much of it in German), and he provides many useful footnotes and bibliographic references. Admittedly, the field is patently thin, largely theologically based, and with very little new knowledge of sources appearing over the last couple of decades. The author takes a fairly conventional approach to his task, beginning with a basic historical introduction to the context of the oratorio together with an outline of the generic conventions in text and music. This provides some useful points, such as the possible relation between Bach's Christmas Oratorio and a multi-part oratorio by Buxtehude that Bach would have heard in Lübeck in 1705; there might also be a connection with a Christmas drama written by Bach's predecessor but two in Leipzig, Johann Schelle. There is a consideration of the possibility of Pietistic influence upon Bach's texts, although this could perhaps be more clearly distinguished from the subjectively charged chorale poetry coming from pre-Pietist clerics, such as Paul Gerhardt. The remainder of the book, and by far its larger part, is a straightforward movement-by-movement study of each cantata and each component movement in turn.

From the start, it is clear that Bossuyt is not expecting a readership with a particularly advanced technical knowledge of music, although he notes that the use of a score and recording is indispensable. And what we get is essentially a dogged description of the score, with particularly detailed commentaries on the melodic line of recitatives. This brings with it the obvious issues of word-painting and a listing of the handful of rhetorical figures that have become standard descriptive devices in Bach scholarship over the last century or so. Ritornello and da capo forms are described in predictable detail, together with stylistic categories abstracted from the standard post-war German texts on Bach's works. It's difficult to know whether this approach would be particularly enlightening for someone with only basic reading and listening skills; after all, once you are able to notice whether a musical line goes up or down, leaps or stays closer to hand, you are presumably not going to learn much more by being told that it does just this. Do we really need to know that the trumpet part of 'Grosser Herr' consists of arpeggios going up and down, and then be led to guess that these, as 'perfect chords', might suggest God's perfection (p. 82)? This is not to say that all of Bossuyt's observations are necessarily that lame, but they would have considerably more effect if they were relayed in parallel rather than in series (i.e. by critically drawing together several examples of a particular device or gesture, analysing and comparing them together, rather than in the loose string dictated by the sequence of the work).

Perhaps part of the problem here is that much of Bossuyt's commentary could be adapted, with the necessary changes of detail, to virtually any texted Baroque piece, good or bad, tedious or exhilarating. Surely, if a guide is designed as a fundamental introduction for a wide range of readers, it should alert us to what is remarkable about the music (even some consideration of harmony and the expressive role of dissonance would be of help here). Moreover, Bossuyt inherits something of the assumptions traditionally adopted by German theologians, namely that Bach's work is simply excellent in every respect and every gesture is pregnant with some theological meaning or symbolism. If...