Piffaro and TENET Vocal Artists present Ein Kind Geborn: A German Christmas

This holiday concert was filled with melodies, some familiar to devotees of sacred holiday music and some (though old) that sounded almost startlingly new. The conceptual afternoon was built around the works of the great German composer, organist, and musical theorist Michael Praetorius (1571-1621) along with music of his predecessors and colleagues.

The “new” Venetian music

Praetorius was a hard-working early-1600s court musician who grounded many compositions in Protestant hymnody, but he was also a champion of the “new” Venetian polychoral music. He composed for up to 21 “voices” (parts), and these intricate works were a perfect showcase for the intertwining of the virtuosic Piffaro players and the sublime TENET singers. Required by his noble employer to compose both secular and sacred music, Praetorius was incredibly versatile, and this exploratory musicianship resulted in many works that not only survived but are still performed and lauded.

Swaths of memorable holiday music are grounded in the 16th-century German Lutheran church, and artistic director Priscilla Herreid designed this concert to center around that tradition and its Christmas services. Concert movements were thus titled by the content of the carols’ lyrics: A Child is Born, From Silence to Singing, The Angels Rejoice, Thankful Shepherds, The Sun Rises, Resounding Praises, Sweet Jubilation, and Ein Kind Geborn. Each of these eight sections was artistically sculpted, a musical equivalent of visual art: a melody was introduced, sometimes by the voices, sometimes by the instruments, and then the ensemble performed a series of inspired arrangements or thematic variations.

Musical jewels

The concert opened appropriately with a work by Praetorius, Uns is ein Kindlein heut geborn / A little child is born to us, its melody introduced by a charming (and mellifluous) trio of bagpipes. The pipes were then joined by other instruments and the vocalists, setting the pattern of each succeeding section filled with musical jewels.

Overall, there were more than 40 pieces of music set for voices and Piffaro’s many period instruments. It’s not possible to catalogue everything, but the packed, well-crafted program flowed so expertly that the afternoon sped by swiftly. Especially beautiful moments included an instrumental arrangement of Praetorius’s carol Es ist ein Ros entsprungen / There is a rose (a melody still beloved) that was exceptionally lyrical. The TENET vocalists also gave a remarkable interpretation of the composer’s familiar In dulci jubilo, passing the melody among the quintet and clearly reveling in the remarkable harmony (and dissonance), sound painting, and changes in tempo and mood for which Praetorius is justly famous, in his time and ours.

Much of the program was taken from the composer’s nine-volume magnum opus, Musae Sioniae / Music of Zion (1605-1610), that includes hymns, duets, trios, and complex multipart pieces in both the Latinate and the new Lutheran German language traditions. And the second half of the concert took its impetus from a 1589 printing of the Christmas morning order of service, one of the oldest surviving examples of printed instructions for singing. Following in that tradition, the audience was encouraged to join in singing a verse of the hymn Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her / From heaven above I come, which they did with enthusiasm.

Inspiration and joy

Because the Piffaro musicians play multiple instruments (sometimes two at once!), their concerts often have a choreographic element. Here the movements of all the musicians were very smoothly executed, and the inventive staging added to the festive atmosphere. At one of these times, the small positif organ even provided improvised “walking music.”

As always, artistic director Priscilla Herreid wrote excellent notes, and the printed program, illuminated with elegant borders and a font that evoked medieval calligraphy, added to the concert’s period atmosphere. As well as the lyrics to each selection and a short history of Praetorius and his musical world, Piffaro included (as always) a helpful guide to their unique period instruments.

I attended the Wilmington performance, but the ensemble—instrumentalists Stephanie Corwin, Héloïse Degrugillier, Jeffrey Grossman, Grant Herreid, Priscilla Herreid, Greg Ingles, Sian Ricketts, Erik Schmalz, Charles Weaver and vocalists Jolle Greenleaf, Clara Rottsolk, Clara Osowski, Andrew Healy, and Andrew Padgett—also presented this concert in Philadelphia and Manhattan. Not surprisingly, several iterations sold out, but Ein Kind Geborn (recorded at New York’s Church of St. Vincent Ferrer) will be available to experience online from December 18 through mid-January, so these two hours of inspiration and musical joy can be heard throughout the holiday season.