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Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern BWV 1 / BC A 173
Annunciation, March 25, 1725
With his composition of the cantata Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern BWV 1 (How lovely gleams the morning star) in March 1725, Johann Sebastian Bach brought his cycle of chorale cantatas to a premature conclusion. He had begun work on it the summer before, surely intending to create a complete annual cycle. We do not know what caused him to halt work on the cycle just before its final quarter. It is conceivable that the librettist, who refashioned chorale strophes into recitatives and arias for the nearly forty preceding chorale cantatas, was no longer available.1 But it also seems possible that a certain exhaustion had set in for the composer, who was faced with the task of creating new compositions, often with little lead time, week after week, while dealing with many other pressing issues and not once being able to go back to an existing composition.If this assumption approaches the truth, it does so only in general—and certainly not regarding the cantata Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern. For here we have a masterpiece of incomparable freshness of invention that serves not just as a conclusion but also as a crown and that, long afterward in 1850, received the honor of being the first work published in the complete edition of all of Bach’s compositions. The richness and freshness of the ideas could, in this special case, also have to do with the fortunate time of origin. For in Leipzig, the feast day of Annunciation was the only holiday during the several weeks of Lent when concerted music was permitted. Normally, during the music-free weeks of the tempus clausum, the busy Thomaskantor would concentrate on preparing Passion music and church music for the three Easter holidays afterward. In 1725 Bach was preparing the second version of the St. John Passion, a work that for the most part had been composed and performed the previous year. Its revision was restricted to inserting older choral movements and arias. Hence there was enough time for the composer to painstakingly prepare a particularly sumptuous cantata for the Marian feast, which coincidentally fell on Palm Sunday.
As is the case for most of its companion works in the chorale cantata annual cycle, the source text for Bach’s cantata was a main hymn for the feast day, in this case, Philipp Nicolai’s Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern. Nicolai was born in Westphalia in 1556 and died in 1608 as senior pastor in Hamburg. He authored this hymn, together with the equally well-known Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Awaken, calls to us the voice), as pastor in Unna during a plague and published them in his collection Freuden-Spiegel des ewigen Lebens (Joyful reflection of the eternal life). This work went through many editions in a very short time, probably because it preserved the spirit of the Reformation to an unusually high degree, even though it was written half a century after Luther’s death.
The person who reshaped Nicolai’s seven-strophe hymn into a six-movement cantata libretto remains unknown. Outwardly, we have here the least complicated example, whereby the interior strophes are refashioned into recitatives and arias and only the external strophes contain Nicolai’s original text, so that Nicolai’s opening strophe becomes the first movement:
Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern,
Voll Gnad und Wahrheit von dem Herrn,
Die süße Wurzel Jesse!
Du Sohn David aus Jakobs Stamm,
Mein König und mein Bräutigam,
Hast mir mein Herz besessen,
Lieblich,
Freundlich,
Schön und herrlich,
Groß und ehrlich,
Reich von Gaben,
Hoch und sehr prächtig erhaben.
How lovely gleams the morning star,
Full of grace and truth from the Lord.
The sweet root of Jesse!
You Son of David from Jacob’s lineage,
My king and my bridegroom,
You have taken possession of my heart,
Lovely,
Friendly,
Beautiful and glorious,
Great and noble,
Rich with gifts,
Highly and most splendidly exalted.
In the following text, a recitative, the libretto alternates between a strict and freer reshaping of the source text. The second chorale strophe begins:
Ei, mein’ Perle, du werte Kron,
Wahr’ Gottes und Marien Sohn,
Ein hochgeborner König.
Ah, my pearl, you precious crown,
True Son of God and Mary,
A king of noble birth.
In the recitative that beginning becomes:
Du wahrer Gottes und Marien Sohn,
Du König derer Auserwählten,
Wie süß ist uns dies Lebenswort,
Nach dem die ersten Väter schon
So Jahr als Tage zählten.
You true Son of God and Mary,
You king of their elect,
How sweet is to us this living word
By which the first fathers
Counted years as well as days.
The Gospel reading of the feast day, the account in Luke 1 of how the angel Gabriel announced the birth of Jesus to Mary, is interwoven with the recitative text.
From the phrase “Flamme deiner Liebe” (Flame of your love), briefly mentioned in the third chorale strophe, the librettist produces an unexpectedly emphatic aria text:
Erfüllet, ihr himmlischen, göttlichen Flammen,
Die nach euch verlangende gläubige Brust!
Die Seelen empfinden die kräftigsten Triebe
Der brünstigsten Liebe
Und schmecken auf Erden die himmlische Lust.
Fill, you heavenly, divine flames,
The faithful breast longing for you!
Our souls feel the most powerful urges
Of ardent love
And taste on Earth heavenly delight.
Any doubts arising as to what “auf Erden” (on Earth) might entail are energetically dispelled by the ensuing recitative:
Ein ird’scher Glanz, ein leiblich Licht
Rührt meine Seele nicht;
Ein Freudenschein ist mir von Gott entstanden,
Denn ein vollkommnes Gut,
Des Heilands Leib und Blut,
Ist zur Erquickung da.
An earthly brilliance, a corporeal light
Does not stir my soul;
A joyful light from God has arisen for me,
For a perfect Good,
The Savior’s body and blood,
Is here for refreshment.
The source chorale as formulated by Nicolai is less pretentious:
Von Gott kommt mir ein Freudenschein,
Wenn du mit deinen Äugelein,
Mich freundlich tust anblicken.
O Herr Jesu, mein trautes Gut,
Dein Wort, dein Geist, dein Leib und Blut
Mich innerlich erquicken.
From God comes to me a joyful light,
When you with your little eyes
Look upon me with friendship.
O Lord Jesus, my trusted Good,
Your word, your spirit, your body and blood
Refresh me within.
Nicolai’s next to last strophe is an invitation to sing praises and to “Zwingen,” here meaning to sound string instruments:2
Zwingt die Saiten in Cythara
Und laßt die süße Musica
Ganz freudenreich erschallen.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Singet,
Springet,
Jubilieret,
Triumphieret,
Dankt dem Herren:
Groß ist der König der Ehren.
Pluck the strings of the zither
And let sweet music
Resound rich with joy.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Sing,
Leap,
Rejoice,
Triumph,
Thank the Lord:
Great is the king of the honorable.
The second aria in the cantata text echoes this invitation to make music:
Unser Mund und Ton der Saiten
Sollen dir
Für und für
Dank und Opfer zubereiten.
Herz und Sinnen sind erhoben,
Lebenslang
Mit Gesang
Großer König, dich zu loben.
Our voices and sounds of strings
Shall for you
Forever and ever
Prepare thanksgiving and offerings.
Heart and mind are lifted
Lifelong
With singing,
Great king, in praise of you.
As usual, the final strophe remains unchanged:
Wie bin ich doch so herzlich froh,
Daß mein Schatz ist das A und O,
Der Anfang und das Ende;
Er wird mich doch zu seinem Preis
Aufnehmen in das Paradeis,
Des klopf ich in die Hände.
Amen,
Amen!
Komm du schöne
Freudenkröne,
Bleib nicht lange,
Deiner wart ich mit Verlangen.
How sincerely glad I am indeed
That my treasure is the alpha and omega,
The beginning and the end;
He will indeed, to his praise,
Take me up in paradise,
For which I clap my hands.
Amen,
Amen!
Come, you lovely
Crown of joy,
Do not long delay,
I await you with longing.
Bach’s composition is dominated by the expansively designed opening chorus. The chorale melody is extensive but well articulated. Its heritage has roots in Strasbourg that can be followed even farther back to Hans Sachs and the Meistersingers. It is clearly focused on the main key, and, with its folklike major tonality, it allows little opportunity for modulatory excursions. This posed a challenge for the Thomaskantor. He met it with an aural panorama of exquisite beauty that makes literal the “morning star,” the metaphorically meant image for Christ. Two horns in their higher ranges, as well as two oboi da caccia, woodwind instruments similar to horns in form with a husky timbre in a rather deep range, provide the breadth of the timbral space, and the glistening figuration of two solo violins evokes the serene brilliance of the morning star. Together with the other strings, this setting makes a wide variety of timbral combinations available, which the composer exploits extensively in the course of the opening movement’s over one hundred measures in
8 meter.
A concise, vivid tenor recitative is followed by the first aria, in which the “kräftigsten Triebe der brünstigen Liebe” (most powerful urges of ardent love) seem restrained, mostly due to the disciplined effect of the obbligato instrument, the oboe da caccia in its deep register. In contrast to this strict setting, the tenor aria, “Unser Mund und Ton der Saiten” (Our mouth and the sound of strings), has a dancelike character that approaches that of the minuet. It affords the string instruments every conceivable opportunity for development, of which the solo and ripieno violins engage themselves in multifarious contrapuntal and timbral combinations. With its gesture of delight in making music, it proves to be a performance of “Musik in der Musik” (music within the music).
Essentially, the closing chorale presents itself as a simple four-part texture, but it comes across as not quite as contemplative as might be expected. The reason lies with the brass. While the first horn has to follow the chorale melody strictly, Bach allows the second enough room to be a countervoice while being mindful of its restricted sound quality in its lower range. This not only results in a five-part texture but also effects a subtle reminiscence on the distinctive timbres of the first movement.
Footnotes
- Schulze (1999, 116) suggested that the anonymous librettist of the chorale cantatas would most likely be someone no longer available to Bach after the late winter of 1725, and that one Andreas Stübel (b. 1653), conrector of the St. Thomas School who died on January 31, 1725, was the most likely candidate. However, Schulze made no mention of Stübel in 2006, perhaps because, as Michael Maul writes, there is no evidence that he ever prepared texts for church music, among other reasons (2018, 188–89).—Trans.↵
- Zwingen generally means "to force."—Trans.↵