Page 113 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

music in the church. Bach and his contemporaries created the church cantata, a multimovement sacred work, lasting twenty to thirty minutes, which included recitatives, arias, and choruses, all accompanied by a small orchestra. The church cantata became the musical soul of the Lutheran Church, the Protestant religion that then dominated spiritual life in German-speaking lands. Bach wrote nearly three hundred cantatas for the citizens of Leipzig. Surrounded by a dozen singers and a small orchestra, all situated in the choir loft above the west door (see Figure 6.2), Bach conducted his cantatas himself, beating time with a roll of paper.
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Awake, a Voice Is Calling, 1731)
Bach composed his cantata Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme in 1731 for a Sun- day immediately before Advent (thus five Sundays before Christmas). The text, drawing upon the Gospel of Matthew (25:1–13), speaks opaquely of a bride- groom (Christ) who is arriving to meet the Daughters of Zion (the Christian community). For every good Lutheran of Leipzig, however, this allegorical story had a personal message: get your spiritual house in order and prepare for the coming of Christ.
Like most of Bach’s cantatas, Wachet auf makes use of a chorale, a spiritual melody or religious folksong, of the Lutheran church. (In other denominations, such a melody is called simply a hymn.) Just as many people today know hymn tunes well, so most Lutherans of Bach’s era knew their chorales by heart. Cho- rales were intended to be easy to remember and sing; indeed, many of the melo- dies had begun life as folksongs or popular tunes. Martin Luther himself encour- aged the singing of religious texts to popular melodies by rhetorically asking: “Why should the devil have all the good tunes?”
By far the most common structure for a chorale tune is AAB. Wachet auf (see Example 6.2), for example, contains seven musical phrases unfolding in the following way: A (1, 2, 3) A (1, 2, 3) B (4–7, 3). The last phrase of section A returns at the end of B to round out the melody.
Example 6.2 > chorale tune
b chorale tune ˙ œ œ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
1.w2 ˙3 &bbc˙˙˙œ˙˙ wÓ˙ ˙ wÓ˙
Wa-chet auf! ruft uns die Stim - me der Wäch-ter sehr hoch auf der Zin - ne: wach' Mit- ter - nachtheisst die- se Stun - de; sie ru- fen uns mit hel-lem Mun-de: wo
bb ˙ ˙ ˙ . Ó ˙ ˙. Ó ˙ ˙.
&b ˙œœ˙w.4 œ˙˙w5 œ˙˙w
auf, du StadtJe - ru - sa - lem! Wohl- auf! der Bräut'gam kommt, steht auf! die Lam-pen nehmt. seid ihr klu- gen Jung - frau - en?
b6 7˙˙˙œœ˙˙˙3˙˙ w &bbÓ˙˙˙wÓ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙œœ˙
Al - le- lu - ja! macht euch be - reit zu derHoch- zeit, ihr müs-set ihm ent - ge - gen gehn!
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