Many often associate certain emotions with a specific era. Love and romanticism, balance and classical, happiness and baroque. This is true of the Musica Sacra season ticket’s Christmas and Easter concerts too. The joys of Christmas are ignited by Bach’s splendid motet, followed by an Advent cantata, and resolved by the elder master Heinrich Schütz’s Christmas Oratorio, which tells the story of the Savior’s birth through music. Bach wrote six motets in all, but in each, he strove to apply everything from his past and present toolkit. The evening’s cantata declaims a choral melody, considering each of the ensemble’s verses. Schütz’s rarely heard piece is a unique impression in the wandering world of early Baroque. In the piece, which is almost purely based on Biblical text, the choir members are both singers and characters. When they evoke the Magi, the entire choir transforms into 4 bass voices. As such, the music can be enjoyed as a kind of Nativity scene.