Schwingt Freudig Euch Empor, BWV 36 - Music

Music

The opening chorus is opened by a ritornell, dominated by two contrasting motifs: the strings play a short rising figure in triplets, the oboes d'amore play an expansive melody. As in the secular model, the movement is in two similar parts, each consisting of two contrasting sections, "Schwingt freudig euch empor zu den erhabnen Sternen" (Soar joyfully upwards to the exalted stars) and "Doch haltet ein!" (Yet stop!). The bass voice, the lowest register, enters first, followed by the tenors, altos, and sopranos. This ascending sequence also reflects the text: "soaring aloft", literally "swinging upward".

Gardiner, who conducted the three cantatas for the First Sunday in Advent during the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage with the Monteverdi Choir in 2000, described the movement as a "spiritual madrigal – capricious, light-textured and deeply satisfying once all its virtuosic technical demands have been met: those tricky runs, divisions and chromatic intervals in all voices, and the chains of triplet figuration in the unison oboes d'amore and first violins". He compares the figures on "haltet ein!" (stop) in the middle section to "Wohin?" (where) in the aria "Eilt, eilt" in Bach's St John Passion.

All three settings of the stanzas from Luther's chorale are different, beginning with a duet for soprano and alto for the first stanza. The voices are doubled by the oboes d'amore and render the text in sections of different length, with sixteen measures for the final "Gott solch Geburt ihm bestellt" (that God had ordained such a birth for Him). Alfred Dürr notes the expressiveness of the music, especially in leaps of sixths on the urgent request "nun komm" (now come), syncopated rhythm on "des sich wundert alle Welt" (over whom the whole world marvels), and daring chromatic on the final line. The tenor aria reflects "Die Liebe zieht mit sanften Schritten" (Love approaches with gentle steps) with oboe d'amore as obbligato instrument, "the traditional musical symbol of love", alluding to the concept of Jesus as the bride-groom and the Soul as the bride, which is also the base for Nicolai's hymn that closes part I in a "rousing four-part harmonisation".

The bass aria beginning part II, "Willkommen, werter Schatz!" (Welcome, worthy treasure!) shows "echoes of the first movement" and avoids a regular da capo structure. The bass voice is the vox Christi, addressing the bride. The welcoming gesture from the secular cantata seems appropriate for the expressed sentiment. The next hymn stanza, "Der du bist dem Vater gleich" (You who are like the Father), the sixth stanza from Luther's hymn "dealing with the sins of the flesh and Christ's mission to redeem humankind", is marked "molt' allegro". The tenor sings the chorale melody unadorned as a cantus firmus, but the oboes d'amore play with "the urgent surging of semi-quaver activity". Dürr sees the expression of "Kampf und Sieg des Gottessohnes" (fight and victory of the Son of God) over "das krank Fleisch" (weak/sick flesh) of man. Gardiner compares it to a trio sonata movement. He terms the last aria "a berceuse of pure enchantment" and compares it to the "echo aria" from part IV of Bach's Christmas Oratorio. The text "Auch mit gedämpften, schwachen Stimmen" (Also with muted, weak voices) is illustrated by a muted (con sordino) solo violin. The closing choral, the final stanza of Luther's hymn, "Lob sei Gott dem Vater ton" (Praise be to God, the Father) is a four-part setting.