This tag was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Angela Watters.
Nun komm der Heiden Heiland BWV 62 / BC A 2
First Sunday of Advent
Nun komm der Heiden Heiland BWV 62 (Now come, savior of the Gentiles) is the later of two cantatas with the same name for the first Sunday of Advent. The earlier work, written in 1714 for Weimar and based on a poetic text by Erdmann Neumeister, includes one strophe from the Advent chorale that gives the work its name. By contrast, this cantata, written a decade later, makes use of all strophes of the chorale. Here—as in most of the works in what is known as Bach’s chorale cantata cycle—only the opening and closing chorale strophes are used without change, while the others are more or less freely reshaped into recitatives and arias. This paraphrase—for which an as yet unidentified author is responsible, perhaps active in Leipzig around 1724—is actually a second reworking, since the text prepared by Martin Luther in 1524 is itself a German version of the ancient Latin hymn Veni redemptor gentium (Come, redeemer of the nations). As mentioned, Luther’s first strophe in the version prepared for Bach remained untouched:Nun komm der Heiden Heiland,
Der Jungfrauen Kind erkannt,
Des sich wundert alle Welt,
Gott solch Geburt ihm bestellt.
Now come, the savior of the Gentiles,
Known as the Virgin’s child,
Of this, all the world marvels:
God ordained him such a birth.
The same is true for the last strophe, with its praise of the Trinity:
Lob sei Gott, dem Vater, g’ton,
Lob sei Gott, sein’m eingen Sohn,
Lob sei Gott, dem heilgen Geist,
Immer und in Ewigkeit.
Praise to God the Father, be,
Praise to God, his only Son,
Praise to God, the Holy Spirit,
Ever and in eternity.
Luther’s spare diction is restricted to the essential and is often merely suggestive. The more ambitious versification of the paraphrases written two centuries later stands in sharp contrast. For example, Luther’s sixth strophe reads as follows:
Der du bist dem Vater gleich,
Führ hinaus den Sieg im Fleisch,
Daß dein ewig Gottes Gewalt
In uns das krank’ Fleisch enthalt.
You who are equal to the Father,
Guide the victory in the flesh
That your eternal power of God
Supports in us the weak flesh.
From this, the librettist crafted an aria text heroic in design in which the model can be sensed only vaguely:
Streite, siege, starker Held,
Sei vor uns im Fleische kräftig,
Sei geschäftig,
Das Vermögen in uns Schwachen
Stark zu machen!
Fight, conquer, strong hero,
Be mighty for us in the flesh,
Be vigorous and make
The capability in us weak ones
Strong!
The approach is similarly free in the penultimate movement of the cantata, a recitative. Luther’s penultimate strophe is the model here:
Dein Krippen glänzt hell und klar,
Die Nacht gibt ein neu Licht dar,
Dunkel muß nicht kommen drein,
Der Glaub bleibt immer im Schein.
Your manger shines bright and clear,
In the night there is a new light,
Darkness must not come within,
Faith must remain ever radiant.
In iambic meter, the preferred style for recitatives, this becomes:
Wir ehren diese Herrlichkeit
Und nahen nun zu deiner Krippen
Und preisen mit erfreuten Lippen,
Was du uns zubereit’:
Die Dunkelheit zerstört uns nicht
Und sahen dein unendlich Licht.
We honor this glory
And draw near now to your manger
And praise with delighted lips
What you prepared for us:
The darkness did not destroy us,
And we saw your unending light.
The poet could have created more unity had he chosen a formulation for the fourth verse such as “Was du für uns hast zubereit” (What you have prepared for us). Whether the rather forceful foreshortening is to be seen as an artistic device of the cantata poet or an intervention on the part of the composer is a question that must be left open.
As mentioned earlier, Bach composed the work based on this libretto in 1724. A reperformance is documented during the period 1732 to 1735. A bit later, another performance seems to have taken place. Remarkably, Bach’s holograph, his manuscript score in his own hand, contains the following outline of the service:
Order of the Divine Service in Leipzig on the First Sunday in Advent: Morning.
1. Preluding.
2. Motet.
3. Preluding on the Kyrie, which is performed throughout in concerted manner [musiziert].
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.
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 the hymnal;
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, etc.
It hardly seems likely that Bach would have needed this memory prompt after more than ten years of service as Thomaskantor. In 1723 Bach had entered a nearly identical service outline1 in the holograph score for the older cantata on Nun komm der Heiden Heiland (BWV 61), composed in Weimar, brought to Leipzig, and reperformed there in December; this outline might in fact have been meant for him at that time. But the notation from the period after 1730 calls for another explanation. It may have arisen from the fact that in 1736, after a delay of three years, the elector of Saxony conferred upon Bach the title Hofcompositeur, and he needed to travel to Dresden to receive it. On this occasion, on the afternoon of December 1, 1736, he performed a two-and-a-half-hour concert on the new Silbermann organ in the Church of Our Lady and thus could not possibly have been back in Leipzig on December 2, the first Sunday of Advent. Bach may have looked beforehand for a substitute for his Leipzig official duties and written out the rather complicated sequence of the church service for him. This would elegantly explain the remarkable outline in the score and, at the same time, provide evidence for a reperformance in December 1736.
A concerted arrangement of the chorale, characteristic of the chorale cantata cycle, opens the cantata. Here the melody of the hymn is presented line by line in long note values by one of the four voices, while the other three support it harmonically or are subordinated to it in the manner of a contrapuntal motet. The unity of the instrumental component serves the cohesion of the entire movement. The motet-like portion, in which the individual chorale lines are preceded by anticipatory imitation, is significantly more extended compared to many other chorale cantatas, as is the extensive coloratura meant as tone painting at the passage “des sich wundert alle Welt” (at which the entire world stands in awe). Of course, for this kind of elaborate arrangement, the brevity of text and melody is essential.
In the second movement, a tenor aria whose text begins “Bewundert, o Menschen, dies große Geheimnis” (Admire, O people, this great mystery), the dance character is striking, as is the closed twenty-four-measure instrumental section at the beginning. With its
8 meter, the movement’s type is roughly situated between passepied and minuet and is usually dominated by a song-like melodic and rhythmically pregnant head motif. The robust bass aria “Streite, siege, starker Held,” introduced by a brief recitative, offers a stark contrast. With its fanfare-like unison passages in the accompaniment and rolling passages for the voice, it belongs to the genre “Aria with Heroic Gesture,” so typical of the era. A sharp contrast to this earthboundedness is set by the otherworldly accompanied recitative for the two high voices that follows, which musically illustrates the birth of Jesus and the journey to his crib with luminous, unearthly key modulations. In conclusion, the melody of the ancient Latin church hymn Veni redemptor gentium is heard once again in four-part texture: “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland.”