Bach’s First Christmas in Leipzig: Vespers in the Nikolaikirche, 25 December 1723

Bach’s first Christmas at Leipzig came during one of his most frenetic years for composition and performance, the Cantor having produced one large cantata (sometimes two) per week since his first service, on 30 May 1723. Not all the music for the service was completely new; indeed, it is likely that only the four ‘Laudes’ – traditional Christmas verses inserted between movements of the E flat Magnificat – were freshly composed that December. Nevertheless, Bach clearly went out of his way to prepare the most impressive music he could, so as to create an appropriate range of moods to aid the congregation’s meditation on the themes of the season. Given the recent closure of the Leipzig opera, there were many in the town who were craving music in the newest styles, and – even in a society in which it was almost impossible to dissent from religious belief – it is very likely that they would have relished the purely musical experience the liturgies afforded.

Lutheran Vespers followed the model of the Roman office in centring on the canticle of the Magnificat (Mary’s song on visiting her cousin Elizabeth, Luke 1:46–55). However, rather than the sequence of psalms of the Catholic tradition, the canticle would often be preceded by an appropriate cantata, normally the same one that had been performed in the morning service that day. In between, in typically Lutheran fashion, came the sermon as the central axis of the liturgy. Beyond this, the symmetrical service was fleshed out with motets and congregational chorales. It thus presented the three main types of church music in use at the time: chorales from the Lutheran tradition; motets, usually drawn from Erhard Bodenschatz’s two-volume collection Florilegium portense (1618 and 1621), which therefore reflected the late Renaissance polyphonic tradition; and sumptuous music in the newest Italianate styles. In many instances, this modern music also contained references to motet and chorale styles, so that it presented a synthesis of much of the known musical past. Beyond this, there was the requirement for the organist to provide preludes to each of the chorales and musical pieces, as well as to accompany the congregation in appropriately festive style.