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Subject Area: Music
Subject Area: Religion

Cantata CXXXII.: Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn. Fourth Sunday in Advent (1715) - Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach’s Chorals, vol. 2 The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Cantatas and Motetts [1917]

Edition used:

Bach’s Chorals. Part I: 2 The Hymns and Hymn Melodies of the Cantatas and Motetts, by Charles Sanford Terry (Cambridge University Press, 1915-1921). 3 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: Bach’s Chorals, 3 vols.

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Cantata CXXXII.

Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn. Fourth Sunday in Advent (1715)

The words and melody of the concluding Choral are those of Elisabethe Cruciger’s Christmas Hymn, “Herr Christ, der einig’ Gott’s Sohn” (see Cantata 22).

The Choral is a substitution, for use at Leipzig, of the movement originally written for and performed at Weimar4 , necessitated by the fact that at St Thomas’ Church figurate music was given only on the first of the Sundays in Advent. Hence Bach’s earlier Advent Cantatas had to be adapted to another season.

The words of the concluding Choral are the fifth stanza of Elisabethe Cruciger’s Hymn:

  • Ertödt’ uns durch dein’ Gute,
  • Erweck’ uns durch dein’ Gnad’;
  • Den alten Menschen kranke,
  • Dass der neu’ leben mag,
  • Wohl hier auf dieser Erden
  • Den Sinn und all’ Begehrden
  • Und G’danken1 hab’n zu dir.

  • B.G. xxviii. 50.

Form. Simple2 .

[4 ] See Schweitzer, ii. 142.

[1 ] 1524 dancken.

[2 ] The Score simply contains the stanza, the name of the tune, and the direction “Choral semplice stylo.”