New Urtext Edition based on original sources by Edward Blakeman
Saint-Saëns was twenty-three when he wrote his Oratorio de Noël and it has all the freshness of a young composer eager to prove himself. He had been organist of the fashionable Church of the Madeleine in Paris for just a year - a prestigious position - and the Oratorio was a major undertaking for his second Christmas there. The work was written in just twelve days between 4 and 15 December 1858.
Despite Saint-Saëns's efforts in overseeing the publication of the Oratorio , it had various mistakes and omissions.
This new edition attempts to correct these, and by close comparison with the various manuscript sources to present the work for the first time in a form as close to possible to Saint-Saëns's intentions.
Where there are still ambiguities, square brackets have been used to indicate alternative or uncertain readings - in particular for the inclusion of extra details that somehow appeared in the printed edition after the preparation and correction of Saint-Saëns's final manuscript