Early in his career Saint-Saëns composed his Oratorio de Noël, an easily accessible work which is now available in an authoritative Urtext edition.
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) was just 23 years old when he composed the first six movements of his Oratorio de Noël in a few days in December 1858. It received its first performance, probably at Midnight Mass, in the church of La Madeleine in Paris. He added four further movements over the following five years.
Inspired by the reception Beethoven’s music received, there was a great fondness for German music in France at this time, especially that of Johann Sebastian Bach. Saint-Saëns’ love of the works of Bach is reflected in transcriptions of some of the cantata and sonata movements for piano, amongst others. Significantly, these were made around the same time as the Oratorio de Noël.
The parallels between Saint-Saëns’ composition and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio are clear, not just because of the subtitle on the first page of the printed score (“Dans le style de Séb. Bach”).
In contrast with Bach, the Christmas story in Saint-Saëns’ version is not narrated by an evangelist, rather the French composer divides the accounts between different soloists. Saint-Saëns also set no special texts: he used exclusively texts from the Vulgate and the Catholic liturgy.
Only in 1892 was the score printed by Durand. The large print-runs of the choral parts and the vocal score indicate that the work was incredibly popular. In later years Saint-Saëns himself described this early work as his “petit oratorio de noël”. It may be a small work, but it is very effective, so that it is attractive both for small choirs as well as larger ensembles. And even now it remains extremely popular worldwide.