Episode 3257
Easter Oratorio
Sun, 2026-Apr-05 00:12 UTC
Length - 4:38
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The featured article for Sunday, 5 April 2026, is Easter Oratorio.
The Easter Oratorio (Latin: Oratorium Festo Paschali; German: Oster-Oratorium), BWV 249, is an oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach. He wrote an autograph score in Leipzig in 1738 under this title, matching his Christmas Oratorio and Ascension Oratorio. Bach had already composed the work in 1725, when he used most of its music for two compositions, the congratulatory Shepherd Cantata, BWV 249a (BWV 249.1), and a church cantata for Easter Sunday, Kommt, gehet und eilet ('Come, go and hurry'), BWV 249.3, that later became the oratorio. The two 1725 works, premiered a few weeks apart, are both musical dramas involving characters: in the secular cantata two shepherds and two shepherdesses, and in the Easter cantata four Biblical figures from the Easter narratives in the Gospel of Luke and other Evangelists. In the oratorio, Bach assigned the music to voice parts instead.
Bach performed the Shepherd Cantata on 23 February 1725 for his patron Christian, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels. Its text was written by Picander, in his first documented collaboration with Bach. Picander may also have adapted his text for the Easter cantata that Bach first performed on Easter Sunday, 1 April 1725, in both a morning service at the Nikolaikirche and a vespers service at the Thomaskirche.
In 1738, Bach revised the Easter cantata as the Easter Oratorio, BWV 249.4. He wrote an autograph manuscript of the score with the title Oratorium Festo Paschali (Easter Oratorio), making only minor changes to text and music. This version is also known as Kommt, eilet und laufet ('Come, hasten and run'). Uniquely among Bach's oratorios, it features no original Biblical text, no Evangelist narrator, and no chorale.
The work is structured in eleven movements. Two contrasting instrumental movements are followed by a duet for tenor and bass, assigned in the cantata to two disciples running to the tomb of Jesus, where they meet two women who followed Jesus (soprano and alto). The middle movements are alternating recitatives in conversation, and arias of contemplation. The final movement is a chorus of thanksgiving. The music is scored for a festive Baroque instrumental ensemble of three trumpets, timpani, a variety of wind instruments, strings and continuo. In the 1740s, Bach again revised the work (BWV 249.5), which he seems to have regarded highly, arranging the third movement partly for choir. He performed the oratorio once more in 1749, the year before his death.
Early Bach scholars, beginning with his biographer Philipp Spitta, were critical of the Easter Oratorio because of its libretto and its character as a musical drama. When the relation to the Shepherd Cantata was discovered in 1940, criticism of the parody music was added. In more recent studies, Christoph Wolff evaluates it as a skillful transformation "from theatrical into devotional music", and Markus Rathey sees the oratorio as a sequel to the St John Passion, "continuing the dramatic narrative but also its theological and musical interpretation".
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:12 UTC on Sunday, 5 April 2026.
For the full current version of the article, see Easter Oratorio on Wikipedia.
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Until next time, I'm standard Kimberly.
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