On Sunday, December 19th the Senior Choir presented Gottfried August Homilius’ Christmas cantata Uns ist Ein Kind Geboren (For Unto Us a Child Is Born) with chamber orchestra at the 10:00 am worship service. Based on biblical passages, including Isaiah’s famous text “and he shall be called: Wonderful, Counselor, Almighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace,” the cantata is an energetic and joyous work which is relatively unknown.
Homilius was one of the most important Protestant church composers of the late eighteenth century. Born in Rosenthal, Germany in 1714 he studied composition and keyboard with J. S. Bach and in 1742 was appointed organist at the Frauenkirche in Dresden. He eventually became music director of Dresden’s three principal churches. Additionally he was obliged to give 24 hours of school instruction weekly in Latin, Greek and music. He brought the Kreuzkirche’s choir (then about 100 members) to a previously unattained perfection. He composed organ works, about 60 motets, more than 200 sacred cantatas, settings of the Magnificat, Passion music and oratorios, most all for his choirs in Dresden. He was an indefatigably active composer well into his later years, as is shown by several series of cantatas from the last years of his life. This cantata which we will present dates from 1784 and was his last work for Christmas. He died on June 2 of the following year.
I first learned of this cantata through a recording made by a choir from Belgium. Over the years I kept my eyes out for the music for this cantata, with no success. A year ago I finally tracked down the cantata by going to the on-line catalogue of Harvard University’s extensive music collection and found that a firm in a small rural German village had published it. I contacted my foreign music dealer and after a number of months the score arrived at my desk here at the church. To my disappointment, it was not the same music as was on the recording, but rather an earlier (and inferior) setting of the same text by Homilius. I continued my search by finding the website of the choir who had made the recording. There I found contact information for the director of the chorus. A few weeks later he returned my email and informed me that the music was found in an unpublished manuscript in the Royal Conservatoire Library in Brussels. The original manuscript was rather unclear and full of mistakes, but he had written it out for his chorus and orchestra for the recording. After a few more pleasant emails, he agreed to have his choir librarian send me a copy of the full score. A few months later, the long sought music arrived in Brunswick. All that remained was to write out the choral and instrumental parts from the full score (and learn the music!).
The cantata has lived up to Homilius’ reputation as a composer of charming, sensitive music with a high technical polish. The music emphasizes melody, naturalness and joy combined with playful counterpoint, all set with colorful and festive instrumentation.
- Ray Cornils
