Though probably created around the same time as Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Carl Heinrich Graun’s Christmas Oratorio already foreshadows the Pre-Classical period and the period of Sentimentalism, especially in its arias. Baroque musical splendour is displayed in the choirs and the large orchestra. It was created during Graun’s time in Braunschweig or Dresden and shows him as a skilful composer of the Italian opera seria, while the work also bespeaks the influence of the strict and solid contrapuntal school. Graun wrote his Christmas Oratorio in 1725, at the young age of 21. The score was thought to have been lost until it was rediscovered in a library in Washington in 1972.