Interview, Bob Chilcott on his Christmas Oratorio

A thoroughly warm-hearted and immediately appealing work, Bob Chilcott's new Christmas Oratorio blends old and new in a variety of ways. It sets some of the best-loved traditional Christmas texts to accessible, singable new music, draws on ancient plainchants to underpin original solo vocal melodies, puts an original spin on the idea of the Evangelist, and makes inventive use of small-scale instrumental forces to create colour and contrast. 

Bob shared some of his thoughts on how the work came to be, why it took the form that it did, and how his approach differs from earlier Christmas Oratorios - chiefly, of course, that written by a certain mid-eighteenth-century director of music at Leipzig's Thomaskirche.

Although there’s an unfathomable amount of Christmas music, there aren’t that many well-known Christmas oratorios as such aside from Bach, Messiah and perhaps Saint-Saëns. What do you think a work of this kind needs to be, in order to be successful?

The most important aim for me with this piece was to make it as connective as I could for both performers and the listeners. I also felt it important to write close in spirit to the models that have gone before. I had to find a way to shape the story in as natural a way as I could, that would bring to life a story that is so widely loved and cherished.  I did this, like Bach, with a tenor Evangelist and tried to make his role song-like and at the same time, direct. I also wrote new hymn tunes to several well-known seasonal hymn texts so that the audience could be part of the performance as well.

You’re on record as saying you felt daunted by the shadow of Bach when you composed your St John Passion in the early 2010s. When you were commissioned to write this Christmas Oratorio, how did you overcome that looming precedent?

When I sang in the Choir of King's College, Cambridge as a tenor, we recorded the Bach Christmas Oratorio and I never forget the impact of being involved in singing this work for the first time. We also had the joy of hearing really great solo singers, such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Janet Baker, Robert Tear and Elly Ameling up close, which was a thrill. I also sang the tenor Evangelist part a few times, which is not an easy role as it is set very high and needs to sound very unforced and beautiful (something I never managed!). In my setting I decided to shape the piece from the Annunciation, with a setting of the Magnificat up to the Presentation of Christ in the Temple to Simeon, so that I could also include a setting of the Nunc Dimittis. These two pieces bookend the drama and at the same time this was a way of acknowledging the fact that the work was written to be performed for the first time in Gloucester Cathedral by the three cathedral choirs of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester, who sing these canticles on a daily basis in the service of Evensong.

Many contemporary composers, when they come to write a big work in the vein of an oratorio, Requiem or Passion, put a modern or secular twist on the texts they choose to set. In your Christmas Oratorio, you’ve mixed more traditional texts with some Christmas-adjacent poetry - what led you down this route?

A priest friend of mine told me once that at Midnight Mass at Christmas time, he decided to read the lessons not from the King James Bible, but from a different source. A lot of people complained saying, 'it wasn't the Christmas we know.' There is a delicate balance between taking the well-known route and embracing new expressions. I decided to tread the more traditional route, particularly with the texts that I chose for the motet settings in the work, 'A Boy was born, ''Love came down at Christmas' and 'A Carol to the King.' I chose them simply because I love them and felt I could offer something new to these texts. In fact 'The Carol to the King,' by the 17th century poet Robert Herrick was completely new to me and to be honest, I don't know of another setting of it other than mine.

You use a variety of instrumentations - opening with the rich sound of the brass quintet and organ, later using the harp to accompany the Evangelist and casting the flute as a kind of leitmotif for the oft-appearing angels. Did you have an eye on performability when scoring the work this way, rather than for larger forces?

I am very keen on the idea of making a piece like this as flexible as possible when it comes to instrumentation. The piece can be performed with just organ, or with flute, harp and organ, with or without the brass and timpani. Brass and organ and timpani is a great sound and generates a lot of volume, so there is a big colour contrast to be had between the delicacy of the flute and harp and the organ and brass. It is also a gloriously festive sound, particularly in the hymn settings. Originally I thought I might accompany the Evangelist with a guitar, but chose the harp instead, as it gave the chance for the choirs to sing the Britten Ceremony of Carols in the concert along with my work when it was first performed at the Three Choirs Festival.

At the premiere (in festive August…!) did you find that the congregation joined in with the hymn-based movements?

The first performance was on the first of August and it was a lovely hot day! We were lucky that the concert was recorded by BBC Radio 3 (and broadcast at Christmas time) so the conductor, Adrian Partington was keen to have a short audience practice beforehand. We were lucky, we had a good crowd and they sang heartily. The hymns form a special part of this piece for me. I grew up singing a lot of hymns, and as a chorister at King's College Cambridge, I can remember the thrill of singing hymns, particularly at the Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve, along with a chapel full of people. I had never written a hymn before I wrote my setting of the St John Passion in 2013. I have found writing hymns to be something I love doing. It's not an easy task, as the melodies have to be quickly remembered and they have to have an inbuilt shape that feels instinctive and natural. Also, they have to be set in a key that doesn't push vocal range either too high or two low. Any harmony has to be as well wrought as possible. And all the hymns here have a descant. I loved singing descants as a boy soprano and they certainly have their place in the world of choral music at Christmas time.