Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme

Easter fell early in 1731, so early that the church calendar contained room for 27 Sundays after the Feast of the Holy Trinity. “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” (“Wake up, the voice calls us”), Bach’s Cantata 140, was written for that rare occurrence and enriched its observance with a blend of music based on a well-known Lutheran chorale and recitatives and arias freely composed around biblical texts associated with the gospel reading for the day, Jesus’s parable of the five wise and five foolish virgins. The work, which plugged a gap in the composer’s 1724-25 series of cantatas based on chorale melodies (when Easter Sunday fell in mid-April), underlines the central theme of Philipp Nicolai’s hymn, originally published in 1599, an evocation of the soul prepared for its symbolic union with Christ. Bach frames Nicolai’s hymn tune, clearly stated in long notes by unison sopranos and solo horn throughout the cantata’s opening movement, with a stately triple-time orchestral accompaniment for three oboes, strings and continuo instruments and punctuates it with choral shouts of “Wach auf”, “Wohl auf” and “Steht auf” (“wake up”, “get up” and “stand up”). The chorale returns in the fourth movement as a dialogue for unison tenors and strings and again in four-part harmony in the closing movement, prefaced in each case by an aria for solo soprano (as the soul) and solo bass (as Jesus the bridegroom), the first a seductive love duet, the second an ecstatic celebration of their mystical union. The composition’s enduring popularity, unusual for Bach’s sacred cantatas, was secured by its cumulative energy and sophisticated marriage of musical ideas and spiritual lessons.