Скачать или смотреть Advent Calendar 15: J. S. Bach (1685-1750) - Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme BWV 645

‘Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme’ (Awake, a voice calls us) is part of ‘six chorales of diverse kinds to be played on an organ with two manuals and pedal’. Johann Georg Schübler, after whom the collection came to be named, published it in 1747 or before August 1748, in Zella St. Blasii. Schübler was a German engraver and organist who belonged to a family of artisans from the Thuringian forest. He was also Bach's pupil in Leipzig at the beginning of the 1740s. At least five preludes of the collection are transcribed from movements in Bach's church cantatas, mostly chorale cantatas he had composed around two decades earlier.

All six Schübler Chorales are in the chorale fantasia format, with one of the melody lines in the setting being the relatively unadorned cantus firmus. ‘Wachet auf’ is a three-part setting and is a transcription of "Zion hört die Wächter singen" ("Zion hears the watchmen sing”), the 4th movement of the cantata Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140, which is a chorale for tenor voice accompanied by unison strings and continuo.

Sample set: Friesach by Piotr Grabowski (via Hauptwerk)