Leipzig, December 1734: Christmas brings the Bach family together. The first snow has fallen and the children Gottfried and Elisabeth are delighted about the arrival of their older brothers Friedemann and Emanuel.
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The Thomaskantor has retired to his music room. Anna Magdalena supports her husband, as there are only a few days left and his latest work, the six-part "Christmas Oratorio", must be finished on time. It is awaited with suspicion by the city council and the gentlemen of the consistory, who have long found Bach's waywardness a thorn in their side and fear that, after the premiere of the St. Matthew Passion a few years earlier, the St. Thomas Church will once again be filled with "operatic" music. With the oratorio, Johann Sebastian hoped to leave the hostility in Leipzig behind him and finally become Dresden's court composer. And, as always, he demands that all members of the family join forces to help him. But there is a dispute between Johann Sebastian and his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, who does not feel appreciated by his father as a musician, partly because his older brother Friedemann is favored by his father.
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When the Leipzig City Council bans the performance of the Christmas Oratorio, the family tensions get to the sensitive 10-year-old Gottfried, but no one notices. In the end, the boy can't take it anymore and disappears without a trace...