Johann Sebastian Bach remains a giant of cultural life, a fact of which the month of December always offers a powerful reminder. This month, the great composer’s Christmas Oratorio will be heard in cities large and small, and each Jauchzet, frohlocket will bring joy to the Christmas celebrations. But in Bach’s day, the Christmas Oratorio’s six parts were performed liturgically, on six different feast days around Christmas. Imagine the joy if a few current performers could revive that practice.

London. Arnhem. Bremerhaven. Vienna. Munich. Turin. Hamburg. Seattle. Sydney. Stuttgart. Budapest. Berlin. Lucerne. Worcester. Minsk. Bergen. Montreal. New York. Pamplona. Tampere. In cities large and small, JS Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is being performed this month, and I’ve only listed a few of them here. It goes without saying that the WO, as Germans lovingly call the Christmas Oratorio (it’s short for Weihnachtsoratorium), will also be performed in Leipzig. Not once but twice: at the great master’s home church of St Thomas and at the St Nicholas’s Church, where Bach also led the music and where the WO was premiered in 1734.

Or rather, the Christmas Oratorio’s first parts were premiered in 1734. At 7am on Christmas Day that year, St Nicholas heard the timpani, trumpets and ‘Jauchzet, frohlocket!’, which begins the WO’s first cantata. The congregants were there at 7am because that was the time at which the Christmas Day service took place, and the first Christmas Oratorio’s first cantata formed part of the Christmas Day service. Indeed, it was written for it. Later that day, the congregants at St Thomas’s Christmas Day service also got to hear the first cantata.

The following day, the St Nicholas congregants returned to church for the Second Day of Christmas service, at which they got to hear the Christmas Oratorio’s second cantata, and so did the St Thomas parishioners at their corresponding service later that day. On the third day of Christmas, lucky Leipzig church-goers got to hear the inaugural performance of the WO’s third cantata. On New Year’s Day, they returned to church again and heard the fourth cantata. The Sunday after that, they were back in church, hearing the fifth cantata. On Epiphany, they returned for their final Christmas service, hearing the WO’s final cantata. (Christmas celebrations officially end with the arrival of the wise men on that day.)

These days, we listen to the WO in a completely different format. We sit down in churches and concert halls and listen to the six cantatas as a concert, usually with Cantatas 1-3 or 4-6 performed together. Almost regardless of who the performers are, it’s a rewarding, enjoyable, profound, exhilarating experience. Indeed, listening to the Christmas Oratorio as a concert has been the practice ever since Eduard Grell first performed the oratorio’s six cantatas in this way with his Sing-Akademie zu Berlin in 1857. So popular are Christmastide WO performances that I once spotted, in Leipzig, a McDonald’s advert featuring a hamburger and ‘Jauchzet, frohlocket!’.

In fact, so popular are the concert performances that the WO is almost never performed in its original format. That’s a shame, because there’s space for both options. What’s more, offering the WO in the format used by Bach himself would be an opportunity for performers and audiences to experience this favourite in a new way. Yes, that would require churches and clergy willing to celebrate all the holy days of Christmas, including 27 December, which is rarely celebrated these days. It would require people willing to return to church six times over thirteen days, because the Christmas Oratorio is not just a collection of six independent cantatas (though each is phenomenal on its own): it’s a complete work. Liturgical performances would also require the singers and instrumentalists to remain in one place over the Christmas period.

Then again, for most people the days between 25 December and New Year’s Eve are a washout. Why not turn Christmastide into a thirteen-day Bach celebration, a celebration to which one could bring friends who are Bach devotees and as well as those who have never heard a single note of the Christmas Oratorio? Imagine heading out for nightly encounters with spectacular music performed (mostly) in the setting of Leipzig church services circa 1734. It would definitely be a new experience. 7 a.m. performances would be a stretch, I admit, though Swedish and other churches maintain the tradition of dawn services on Christmas Day.

In the meantime, enjoy a Christmas Oratorio concert performance near you. And if there really isn’t one, I recommend this rendition of Parts 1-4 with the Gaechinger Cantorey conducted by Hans-Christoph Rademann or this equally spectacular one of the entire oratorio with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and the NDR Vokalensemble conducted by Holger Speck.