Joseph Haydn’s charming Missa Sancti Nicolai was written in 1772, presumably for performance on St Nicholas’s day, 6 December, the beginning of the Christmas season in Austria. Its folk-like style, with drones and rustic melodies, seems intended to evoke the music of the shepherds in the Christmas story.

In this programme the mass movements are surrounded by other vocal and instrumental music, as they would have been at the time. It was a common practice to use movements of symphonies during the mass, so we have divided up Haydn’s C major Symphony no. 25, using the first movement as an intrada to introduce the proceedings and the other movements as an Epistle sonata, placed between the Epistle and the Gospel. The delightful D major horn concerto by Johann Michael Haydn, Joseph’s younger brother, is played during the Communion, a common use of such works in the eighteenth century.

The programme is completed by Joseph Haydn’s Cantilena pro Adventu, an Advent aria in operatic style which serves as the Offertory motet, and several choral pastorellas, written in the same rustic Christmas style as the Mass.