About this edition
Bach's Weihnachtsoratorium (Christmas Oratorio), BWV 248, is a sequence of six sacred cantatas written for the six feast days from Christmas Day through Epiphany, which together form one of the grandest narrative structures in all of Baroque music. Composed in Leipzig for the 1734–35 season, it opens with the exultant chorus "Jauchzet, frohlocket," its D-major trumpets and timpani ablaze, and then ranges widely: the pastoral Sinfonia of Part II, the tender cradle-song "Schlafe, mein Liebster," the Evangelist's recitative narration, and chorales of great depth, including the Passion Chorale melody set to "Wie soll ich dich empfangen." Much of the music is Bach's own inspired parody of earlier secular cantatas, reworked with such craft that the sacred words seem to have been their purpose from the start.
This printing reproduces the first edition published in the Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe, Band 5(2), issued in Leipzig by Breitkopf und Härtel in 1856 and edited by Wilhelm Rust (1822–1892), who would later become Thomaskantor in Leipzig. The Bach-Gesellschaft was founded in 1850, on the centenary of the composer's death, to prepare the first complete critical edition of his works; the series appeared over nearly five decades and established the textual foundation on which the great majority of later editions and performances still rest. Rust's volume was for generations the standard scholarly source for the Christmas Oratorio and remains valued for its careful engraving and its close fidelity to Bach's autograph.
About this edition:
- Format: complete full orchestral score, all six parts of BWV 248
- Page size: 8.5 x 11 inches
- Reproduced from a public domain source
- Faithful reproduction of the 1856 Bach-Gesellschaft first edition edited by Wilhelm Rust
- Publisher: Purple 4R Publishing
This edition reproduces a historical score that is now in the public domain, making a cornerstone of the choral-orchestral repertoire easy to own and study. We hope it serves conductors, singers, instrumentalists, students, and scholars who want to keep this beloved music close at hand.
