MARY KNEW - Music for December 18, 2022 + The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Vocal Music

• There Is No Rose – Graham J. Ellis (b. 1952)

Instrumental Music

• Three settings of Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland! BWV 659, 660, and 661– Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Congregational Music (all hymns from The Hymnal 1982 with the exception of those marked “R” which are from Renew.)

• Hymn 56 O come, O come, Emmanuel (VENI, VENI, EMMANUEL)
• Hymn 54 Savior of the nations, Come! (NUN KOMM, DER HEIDEN HEILAND)
• Hymn 59 Hark! A thrilling voice is sounding (MERTON)
• Hymn R26 Jesus, name above all names (HEARN)
• Hymn 66 Come, thou long expected Jesus (STUTTGART)
• Psalm 80 – Tone VIIIa, refrain by Jackson Hearn

There Is No Rose

From the 15th Century comes this charming text extoling the Virgin Mary and her part in the incarnation. It is a macaronic text, meaning it uses a mixture of languages, in this case English and Latin. This is a setting by Graham Ellis, an organist and conductor who is presently conductor of the Liverpool Sinfonia. He has also worked for BBC radio and television and was Director of Music at Birkenhead School for 33 years, during which time its Chapel Choir gained an increasing reputation, performing in cathedrals throughout this country and in concert in France, Venice, Verona, Florence, Prague, Salzburg, Vienna and Northern Spain.

Nun Komm, der Heiden Heiland

In the last ten years of his life, Bach gathered together and completed a series of chorale arrangements, presumably planning to have them published, just like the third part of the Clavier-Übung in 1739. It concerns a selection of his compositions from much earlier years, when he was working as an organist in Weimar, Arnstadt and Mühlhausen. The collection became known as the 18 Choräle or Leipziger Choräle.

The  Leipziger Choräle include two ‘trilogies’: one based on Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr, and one on the Advent hymn Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, which we are singing as our middle hymn this Sunday, hymn 54. Whereas Allein Gott concerns the Trinity, here it is all about Jesus, who has three roles in the catechism: sanctifier, redeemer and protector. 

BWV 660 (Opening Voluntary) REDEEMER

Many a preacher remarks at Christmas time how the Passion – the Christian promise of redemption – could never have come about without the birth of Jesus. The two poles are closely connected, and Luther refers to this in Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland with the contrast between light and dark. In his turn, Bach also leaves us in no doubt about it in BWV 660. The whole sombre work is pervaded with symbols of the cross.

In any case, this compact work leaves room for interpretation. The two well-matched bass parts are probably arrangements of viola da gamba and cello parts (the big chords at the end of each phrase are typical of gamba music), but at the same time they could symbolise God as the foundation, or even a duet between God and Jesus – equal yet different. In the curious ending, some people hear how God leaves his son, while others interpret the difficult harmonies as representing Jesus’ descent into hell, foretold in the Advent chorale, and the fulfilling of God’s commandment.

But it is the cross motifs that are easiest to hear. They begin in the bass lines, which in this performance are almost identical and therefore continually in one another’s register. Reading along in the score, you also discover the refined way in which Bach begins the melody – not in one part, but divided over both. And by slightly raising the third note of the melody (on the word ‘der’), the interval to ‘Heiden’ becomes smaller and dissonant. It is no coincidence that this is the same interval as in Lass’ Ihn kreuzigen and Komm süsses Kreuz in the St Matthew Passion.

BWV 659 (Communion) SANCTIFIER

Whatever the case, this chorale arrangement is full of mystical expectation. Although Bach borrowed the form from Buxtehude, in style BWV 659 would not be amiss as the middle movement of a concerto in Italian style. All the elements are present: a walking bass, a duet of middle voices (sometimes in canon and sometimes referring to the chorale melody) and a leading upper voice. In the arrangement of the melody in the upper voice, Bach goes much further than his predecessors. Each phrase grows out of the chorale into the most wonderful, spun-out coloratura. At the end of the third line of the verse, the world’s amazement is reinforced by a harmonic pause and an abrupt deceleration of the bass – everyone holding their breath – a trick often used by Bach when writing about the birth of Jesus.

BWV 661 (Closing Voluntary) PROTECTOR

Bach had no choice but to radiate when closing his trilogy on the chorale Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, especially as the organ had to remain silent for a while following the first Sunday in Advent. After a subdued arrangement (BWV 659) and rather tormented one (BWV 660), the hopeful story was finished off, as it were, with this jubilant version. As so often in Bach’s trilogies, the chorale is given in the bass here, as the foundation of a loud plenum. For all its variety, the trilogy forms such a wonderful unity that Bach’s pupil Johann Christian Kittel used it in his own lessons as an example, and he was certainly not the only one to do so.

Before the bass introduces the melody in its full glory, Bach constructs a varied fugue. You can just make out the outlines of the choral melody in the theme, which keeps recurring in two ways: rectus (‘normal’) and inversus (in reverse – all the steps of the original melody that ascended now descend, and vice versa). This occurs for the first time just after the second chorale phrase, followed by a repeat of earlier material, which is also ‘upside down’. Above the last sentence of the chorale, we even hear the ‘upright’ and the reversed versions of the theme together, maybe in order to express the light in the phrase ‘Der Glaub’ bleibt immer im Schein’.

I am indebted to the website of the Netherland Bach Society (https://www.bachvereniging.nl/en) for their copious notes on Bach's chorale preludes today.