Composers Datebook™ is a daily two-minute program designed to inform, engage, and entertain listeners with timely information about composers of the past and present. Each program notes significant or intriguing musical events involving composers of the past and present, with appropriate and accessible music related to each.
Bach in Leipzig, Bernstein in Berlin
Today is a holiday for most people, but certainly not for church musicians. On this day in 1734 in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach supervised not one but two performances of the first part of his new "Christmas Oratorio." Bach was music director of two Leipzig churches, responsible for morning and afternoon performances scheduled on the same day. The "Christmas Oratorio" was conceived as six separate cantatas on the Christmas theme, spread out over Christmas, New Year's Day, and Epiphany—so Bach and his Leipzig musicians kept busy well into the following year. "Jauchzet, frohlocket" sings the chorus in German at the opening of the first of the six cantatas—"Rejoice and be happy!" Closer to our own day, musicians from several countries gathered in Berlin at Christmastime in 1989 to participate in especially joyous performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony led by Leonard Bernstein, which celebrated the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the eventual reunification of the two halves of Germany separated since the end of World War II. A multi-national orchestra included members of the Bavarian Radio Symphony with additional players drawn from the major orchestras of New York, London, Paris, Dresden and Leningrad. They performed first on the west side of the wall on December 23rd, and then on the east side on the 24th. On Christmas Day, a video performance was telecast from Berlin to the world.