From ancient times to the present day, the best Christmas music captures the spirit of jubilation in sound. Here's some of our favorite early music Christmas albums, featuring music spanning the 10th to 18th centuries.
The Middle Ages
Joel Cohen and the Boston Camerata’s A Medieval Christmas presents music from the 10th to 14th centuries. This is a marvelous collection of chant, carols and some exuberant instrumental works. The album also features readings in Old and Middle English which are interspersed between the musical tracks, providing context for the music. This is a marvelous introduction for newcomers to early music.
The Renaissance
Stile Antico's Puer Natus Est is a brilliant collection of Tudor music for Advent (the four weeks preceding Christmas) and Christmas. Motets by Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, John Taverner and John Sheppard frame Tallis's Missa Puer Natus Est. The group's strong young voices soar in these full-blooded, energetic performances making this a very special album.
The superb Westminster Cathedral Choir sings Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina's most glorious Music for Advent and Christmas. The centerpiece of the album is his Missa Hodie Christus Natus est but the choir of men and boys also sing several of the composer's motets.
The Baroque
For sheer variety the Baroque has some of the finest Christmas music ever written. There are cornerstone works like Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Handel's Messiah, and Christmas concerti by Corelli and Torelli. But if you look beyond these favorites, there's even more to enjoy.
With its color and open-hearted joy, Heinrich Schütz’s Weihnachts – Historie (Christmas Story) is irresistible. The piece has a childlike innocence with a narrator telling the tale in recitative while angels, shepherds and the Magi sing melodious arias and choruses. Rene Jacobs and company's recording on Harmonia Mundi is the finest available and features the wonderful soprano Maria Cristina Kiehr and countertenor Andreas Scholl in cameo roles.
French Baroque composers knew how to celebrate Christmas! Deliciously melodic noëls (carols) were mainstays for church organists. These popular tunes would have been familiar to congregations and the brilliant Dutch organist Ton Koopman presents a number of them, as well as some other Baroque organ works for Christmas on a recital called Puer Nobis Nascitur.
Marc-Antoine Charpentier used popular noëls in his delightful Messe de Minuit pour Noel (Midnight Mass for Christmas). This recording with the angelic voices of the Choir of Kings College, Cambridge conducted by Philip Ledger is the one I grew up with and it's still a great favorite.
The Feast of the Epiphany is celebrated 12 days after Christmas, but you'd be cheating yourself if you waited until then to listen to Cristofaro Caresana's L'Adoratione de'Maggi (The Adoration of the Magi). Caresana was a little-known late 17th century composer whose music is marvelously unaffected. The album is comprised of cantatas by Caresana and some string sonatas by Pietro Andrea Ziani. The Caresana cantatas have an earthy, folk-like flavor as well as some beautiful melodies. Dance rhythms swirl about and blend with gorgeous melodic lines. If you think of your favorite rustic Italian dance whirling around arias by Alessandro Scarlatti you'll know what to expect. The cantatas are performed by I Turchini (formerly Cappella della Pietà de'Turchini) under the direction of Antonio Florio. The group are the preeminent interpreters of Neapolitan Baroque music. If you enjoy this album, you'll also want to pick up Per la Nascita del Verbo, their first Neapolitan Baroque Christmas album.
I'd be remiss if I left Angels and Shepherds, A 17th Century Christmas off the list. The brilliant vocalists and instrumentalists of the Netherlands Bach Society under the direction of Jos van Veldhoven perform music by composers from Northern Europe and the Mediterranean. This is a superbly programmed and performed album that has glorious chorale settings by Sweelinck rubbing musical elbows with motets by the Bolognese nun Chiara Margareta Cozzolani, and anonymous settings of Lutheran Christmas hymns sitting beside music of Giacomo Carissimi. It doesn't just work, it dazzles. The album also boasts some of the finest sound you will ever encounter, play it as a lossless download and prepare to be knocked out of your Christmas stockings!
by Craig Zeichner
Featured Albums
