French Christmas

Works performed:

Messe de Minuit by Marc Antoine Charpentier and works by De Lalande, Fauré, Gounod, Poulenc

Dance-like and with courtly nobility or romantic and devout, but always with charm and taste, that is what French Christmas music sounds like. The "Noëls variés" ("Variations on Christmas Carols") have dominated the Christmas season in French cathedrals and castles since the Baroque period: initially variations on the lively, dance-like melodies of the Noëls, the traditional French Christmas carols that are often passed down orally, set for keyboard instruments.

Musicians and listeners alike seem to have taken such delight in these folk-song-like, bucolic melodies that they also became the basis for larger works:

In the Christmas midnight services in Versailles they were heard as "Sinfonies de Noëls". M.A. Charpentier used them as the basis for an entire mass. Strings and especially recorders produce a sound that is immediately associated with a baroque-transfigured pastoral idyll.

During the renewed upswing of French sacred music in the 19th century, the joy of melodicism remained, but now a touching, heartfelt piety clothed the old melodies instead of courtly splendor.