To me, Bach and Christmas are virtually synonymous. His Christmas cantatas show his phenomenally rich and varied response to the nativity story in a series of tableaux that one might consider to be the musical equivalent of, say, Botticelli, Bellini or Leonardo.
For centuries there has been tension between the sheer joie de vivre at Yuletide and the renunciation of the world by Christian theology. It's still alive in people's nostalgic attachment to the drab rituals of Anglican churchgoing and dutiful hymn singing, which is drowned in the hedonistic excesses of Christmas pud, booze and the exchange of over-expensive presents.
But that tension does not feature in Bach's Christmas music. He subscribes to all the colourful and surprisingly sensuous celebration of the nativity that persisted in Lutheran Germany to the mid-18th century. He seems to embrace the medieval concept of feasting with dancing and song as the most appropriate way to celebrate the supreme archetype of human birthdays.
Accordingly, even if it contains sobering meditation on human inadequacies and ill-preparedness to receiving the infant Jesus, his music is life-affirming. In it, heaven and earth meet: the rough stable becomes the palace of the great king. Here, perhaps, we have a clue to the extraordinary consoling power of Bach's music - surely unique - written by a man whose brain may have been superhuman, whose spiritual heart was in the heavens, but whose feet stayed very much on the ground.
I would like to share with you my delight and amazement at the sheer quality of Bach's Christmas music and I shall be talking about and playing his music throughout the week. As a Christmas gift, here are two choruses and an aria from the Cantata pilgrimage for you to download.
Opening chorale: Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ
