We travel to Germany for Christmas to explore the wealth of rarely heard musical treasures from the early Baroque through the twentieth century. Johann Ahle's cantata Fürchtet euch nicht features a dramatic dialogue between a choir of angels and a choir of shepherds. Andreas Hammerschmidt is represented with his stirring setting of Machet die Tore weit and the charming motet Sei willkommen, Jesulein. Felix Mendelssohn's Frolocket ihr Völker auf Erden is among several lyrical gems of the nineteenth century. We connect the past to the present with a beautiful neoclassical setting of Maria durch ein Dornwald ging by Günter Raphael and Hugo Distler's lovely Est ist ein Ros entsprungen. The chorus will be joined by a lively Baroque consort of bassoons and sackbuts.

Bach's earliest cantatas, composed at Arnstadt and Mühlhausen, are modeled upon those of his older contemporaries, notably Johann Pachelbel and Dietrich Buxtehude. Last season we featured Pachelbel's chorale cantata on Christ lag in Todesbanden; this season we present Bach's more familiar and beloved chorale cantata of the same name. We will also perform Aus der Tiefen ruf' ich, Herr, zu dir, a penitential cantata, which skillfully juxtaposes verses of Psalm 130 with the verses of a Lutheran chorale. We finish with Bach's earliest surviving cantata, Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, composed during his brief time at Arnstadt. Bach composed choral fugues with richly imitative counterpoint for the chorus in four of the seven movements.

The master composers of the early Baroque included many Italians, among them Giovanni Gabrieli, Claudio Monteverdi, and Giacomo Carissimi. Domenico Scarlatti, better known for his keyboard sonatas, was also a superb composer of religious music; we will present one of the first performances of his recently discovered Missa Breve "La Stella" for double choir. In the twentieth century, choral and chamber works by Italian composers were often neglected by a public more interested in opera. Ildebrando Pizzetti's beautiful Messa di Requiem is one such piece, composed in a modern, yet consciously neo-Renaissance style. Pizzetti's student Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed Romancero gitano, based upon poetry of Federico García Lorca, for choir and solo guitar.

From the elegant court of Louis XIV, the "Sun King," we present glorious music by three of the greatest composers of the French Baroque. Henri Du Mont and Michel Richard Delalande each served as director of music at the Royal Chapel in Versailles. Du Mont's richly textured Magnificat features soloists, chorus, and a small orchestra. Delalande's lively setting of Psalm 98, Cantate Domino canticum novum, for chorus and orchestra, is one of over seventy motets he composed for the Royal Chapel. Most famous of the three, Marc-Antoine Charpentier was active at the Royal Chapel in Paris, and served Louis' son, the Grand Dauphin. His beautiful Messe des morts from the mid-1690s, with its sepulchral scoring of strings and flutes and serenely imitative polyphony, is one of his most affecting works. Paul Flight leads the chamber chorus and a fine Baroque orchestra, with featured soloists: soprano Jennifer Paulino, mezzo soprano Christina Schiffner Santschi, tenors Brian Staufenbiel and Mark Bonney, and baritone Sepp Hammer.