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Nun komm der Heiden Heiland BWV 61 / BC A1
First Sunday of Advent
There are two Bach cantatas that begin with the first strophe of Martin Luther’s chorale Nun komm der Heiden Heiland (Now come, savior of the Gentiles), and both are for the first Sunday of Advent. This one, the older of the two, originated in Weimar in 1714. The other was composed a decade later in Leipzig. The work composed in 1714 is based on a text by Erdmann Neumeister. Born near Weissenfels (Thuringia) in 1671 and active at first in various positions near this royal seat, in 1714 Neumeister was working as senior court chaplain and superintendent in Sorau, Silesia. In that year he published a new annual cycle of cantata texts in Frankfurt am Main under the title Geistliche Poesien mit untermischten biblischen Sprüchen und Choralen auf alle Sonn- und Festtagen (Sacred poems with interspersed biblical sayings and chorales for all Sundays and feast days), intended to be set by Georg Philipp Telemann, the director of music at Frankfurt. In March 1714 Telemann stood as godfather at the baptism of Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel. Six decades later, Carl Philipp Emanuel reported regarding his father that “in his younger years he was often together with Telemann—who also lifted me out of the baptismal font.”1 It seems likely that this close relationship, featuring godparenthood, enabled an exchange of news and recent developments that included Neumeister’s new annual cycle of texts.Annual text cycles normally were arranged according to the church year, beginning, as this one does, with the first Sunday of Advent. The Gospel reading for this Sunday, found in the twenty-first chapter of Matthew and nearly identically in Mark and Luke, describes the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and, thus, the arrival of the savior:
When they now came near to Jerusalem, at Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village that lies before you, and immediately you shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me! And if anyone says something to you, you shall say, the Lord needs them, and immediately he will release them to you.” All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, thy king comes to you, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass.’” The disciples went forth, and did as Jesus commanded them, and brought the ass and the colt, and put their clothes on them, and they set him thereon. But many people spread their garments in the way, others cut down branches from the trees, and scattered them in the way. But the people however, those that went before followed, cried and said, Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he that comes in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! (1–9)
As the title of his annual cycle indicates, Erdmann Neumeister’s cantata poetry belongs to the genre of mixed text form; that is, it contains free poetry—recitatives and arias—alongside chorale strophes and biblical passages. This form of mixed text was long regarded as Neumeister’s most important contribution to the development of the Protestant Church cantata, until it turned out that Neumeister neither invented this hybrid text nor particularly preferred it. His domain was free cantata poetry without chorale strophes or biblical passages, with which he surprised his contemporaries in 1702.2 He completed the transition to mixed text subsequently and perhaps even reluctantly; according to a predecessor in Thuringia in 1704 whose identity remains unknown to scholarship, the roots of the practice reach far back into the seventeenth century.
At the beginning of his libretto, Neumeister placed the first strophe of Luther’s German translation of the ancient church hymn Veni redemptor gentium, published in 1524:
Nun komm der Heiden Heiland,
Der Jungfrauen Kind erkannt,
Des sich wundert alle Welt,
Gott solch Geburt ihm bestellt.
Now come, savior of the Gentiles,
Known as the child of the Virgin,
Of this, all the world marvels,
God ordained him such a birth.
A chorale fragment concludes the libretto, the Abgesang (second part) of the last strophe of Philipp Nicolai’s 1599 hymn Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (How brightly gleams the morning star). Nicolai’s strophe begins with the words “Wie bin ich doch so herzlich froh” (How am I though so sincerely glad); the Abgesang reads:
Amen! Amen!
Komm du schöne Freudenkrone, bleib nicht lange!
Deiner wart ich mit Verlangen.
Amen! Amen!
Come, you beautiful crown of joy, tarry not long!
I await you with longing.
“Kommen” (come) is the most important keyword of the entire cantata libretto; it is missing only from the one movement that cites a passage from the Gospel. The free portions of the text are characterized by this keyword, as in movement 2, a recitative:
Der Heiland ist gekommen,
Hat unser armes Fleisch und Blut
An sich genommen
Und nimmet uns zu
Blutsverwandten an.
The savior is come,
Has taken our poor flesh and blood
Upon himself
And accepts us as blood relatives.
And at the conclusion:
Was tust du nicht
Noch täglich an den Deinen?
Du kömmst und läßt dein Licht
Mit vollem Segen scheinen.
What do you not do
Still daily for your people?
You come and let your light
Shine with full blessing.
The accompanying aria prays for this blessing at the outset of the newly begun church year:
Komm, Jesu, komm zu deiner Kirche
Und gib ein selig neues Jahr!
Befördre deines Namens Ehre
Erhalte die gesunde Lehre
Und segne Kanzel und Altar.
Come, Jesus, come to your church
And grant a blessed new year!
Promote your name’s honor,
Uphold the sound teaching,
And bless pulpit and altar.
Words of Jesus give the answer to this prayer from the third chapter of the Revelation of St. John: “Siehe, ich stehe vor der Tür und klopfe an. So jemand meine Stimme hören wird und die Tür auftun, zu dem werde ich eingehen und das Abendmahl mit ihm halten und er mit mir” (3:20; See, I stand before the door and knock. Should anyone hear my voice and open the door, to him I will go in and have the evening meal with him and he with me). The meaning of “Tür auftun” and “eingehen”—to open the door and go in—is expressed by the penultimate movement of the cantata, an aria whose text paraphrases the classic metaphor of the human heart as the dwelling of God:
Öffne dich, mein ganzes Herze,
Jesus kommt und ziehet ein.
Bin ich gleich nur Staub und Erde,
Will er mich doch nicht verschmähn,
Seine Lust an mir zu sehen,
Daß ich seine Wohnung werde.
O wie selig werd ich sein!
Open yourself, my whole heart,
Jesus comes and enters.
Though I am but dust and earth,
He will, nevertheless, not disdain me,
His pleasure in me to see,
That I become his dwelling.
O how blessed will I be!
As mentioned, Johann Sebastian Bach’s composition based on this text originated in late 1714 for the service in the Weimar castle chapel. A reperformance is documented in Leipzig in 1723, Bach’s first year of service there. It is remarkable that on this occasion Bach outlined the rather complicated sequence of the church service in the score, including the organist’s duties—which he himself did not have to perform:
1 Preluding.
2 Motet.
3 Preluding on the Kyrie, which is performed throughout in concerted manner [musiciret].
4 Intoning before the altar.
5 Reading of the Epistle.
6 Singing of the Litany.
7 Preluding on [and singing of ] the Chorale.
8 Reading of the Gospel [crossed out: and intoning of the creed].
9 Preluding on [and performance of ] the principal music [cantata].
10 Singing of the Creed [Luther’s Credo hymn].
11 The Sermon.
12 After the Sermon, as usual, singing of several verses from a hymn.
13 Words of Institution [of the Sacrament].
14 Preluding on [and performance of ] the Music [probably the second half of the cantata]. And after the same, alternate preluding and the singing of chorales until the end of the Communion, et sic porro [and so on].3
Accordingly, the “principal music” (after number 9) or the “Music” (during number 14)—that is, the cantata—would have been performed with the first part before the sermon, between the reading of the Gospel and the singing of the creed, Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott, and the second part after the Words of Institution and before or during Communion or the Offertory. But whether the cantata Nun komm der Heiden Heiland in fact was performed in two parts, the first part ending after the third movement, cannot be determined. It is also conceivable that the entire cantata was performed as principal music and that for the presentation of music during Communion or the Lord’s Supper the work of another composer was drawn upon.
The Weimar Advent cantata Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland displays the thirty-year-old court organist at the height of his powers. The first movement meets a self-imposed challenge, as it integrates an arrangement of an ancient church hymn with the modern instrumental form of the French overture. This is in three parts; its first and last sections have dotted rhythms and sweeping scales that go back to the fanfares at the French opera in the seventeenth century that announced the arrival of the king. It is thus clear that Bach’s compositional experiment was meant to symbolize, formally, the entrance of Jesus in Jerusalem and the arrival of the savior at the same time. That no radiant major is allowed to sound, and instead a melancholy, shadowy minor, is conditioned by the modal nature of the ancient hymn tune. A change of tempo and meter in the middle section enables the buoyant fugal development of the text line “des sich wundert alle Welt.” Buoyant as well is the tenor aria, following a brief recitative extended by an arioso at its conclusion. Here, the upper strings—two violins and two violas—unite to form a pastose obbligato voice of sonorous timbre. The Gospel recitative, “Siehe, ich stehe vor der Tür und klopfe an” (See, I stand before the door and knock), is taken by the bass, the vox Christi (voice of Christ). The pizzicato interspersed with rests more reflects tense anticipation and preliminary uncertainty than simply tone painting of “knocking at the door.” Sincere naivete and the use of the most modest instrumental forces define the soprano aria, “Öffne dich, mein ganzes Herze,” whose increasingly joyous excitement flows directly into the closing chorale. The two violins form an obbligato part that gives it festive splendor, transiting the entire compass of the two instruments and climbing to the highest possible peak at the closing fermata, certainly conducted and performed in person by the composer and concertmaster, Johann Sebastian Bach.