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- Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen
Weihnachtsoratorium, version für Kammerorchester (2017)
- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
- 1(afl).1(obda).0.1/1.1.1.0/timp(perc)/str 4.4.3.3.2
- double SATB
- T
- 1 hr 5 min
Programme Note
As the basis for his Christmas Oratorio, Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen has taken one of the great musical classics of Christmas – the Christmas Oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach. Agerfeldt Olesen says that his work emanates from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio:
“However, my work is not intended to be an artistic or aesthetic antithesis, even though it would have been a more obvious way to go for a composer in 2017. It originates in my own experience of Bach’s oratorio being completely essential, as a work that addresses a need in our time. My work is a kind of ’dogma-oratorio’. The dogma is to follow the same text as Bach – for both the gospel and the poetry by Picander. Another dogma: Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is an uncovering of a being that lives and breathes through music. By staying close to that being all through the compositional process, I will try to uncover it again. It is another time, different tones, a freedom to break all the rules. An example could be using another text and break the dogma of the original text. If the question is Bach’s Christmas Oratorio from 1724, then what would my answer be in 2017?”
The composition has been in progress for several years. It contains extracts from Bach’s Oratorio, The Gospel of Luke and quotations from the Pegida demonstrations, read and heard on the internet.
“However, my work is not intended to be an artistic or aesthetic antithesis, even though it would have been a more obvious way to go for a composer in 2017. It originates in my own experience of Bach’s oratorio being completely essential, as a work that addresses a need in our time. My work is a kind of ’dogma-oratorio’. The dogma is to follow the same text as Bach – for both the gospel and the poetry by Picander. Another dogma: Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is an uncovering of a being that lives and breathes through music. By staying close to that being all through the compositional process, I will try to uncover it again. It is another time, different tones, a freedom to break all the rules. An example could be using another text and break the dogma of the original text. If the question is Bach’s Christmas Oratorio from 1724, then what would my answer be in 2017?”
The composition has been in progress for several years. It contains extracts from Bach’s Oratorio, The Gospel of Luke and quotations from the Pegida demonstrations, read and heard on the internet.
Scores
Score preview