Kein Ohr hat mehr gehört
Solche Freude.
Das sind wir froh, i-o, i-o,
Ewig in dulci iubilo.
This hymn, with its magnificent tune, has long been known as the “King of Chorals.” (For the “Queen of Chorals” see [No. 529]). Percy Dearmer writes of this choral: “There is no other hymn like this, surely the grandest and most thrilling, both in words and music—and both words and music by the same man.” It is based on the parable of the wise and foolish virgins in Matt. 25:1-13, and on Rev. 19:6-9 (the marriage of the Lamb); 21:22; 1 Cor. 2:9; Ezek. 3:17; and Isa. 52:8.
Nicolai, an ardent Lutheran and influential preacher, was fierce in his denunciation of both Calvinism and Roman Catholicism. He held pastorates in various places. From 1601 until his death, he was chief pastor of St. Katherine’s, Hamburg. It was during his five years at Unna, Westphalia, that a terrible pestilence swept through the community, claiming the lives of over 1300 people. Nicolai’s parsonage overlooked the church yard where the burial of the victims was taking place continually. These scenes of sorrow and death moved him to write this great judgment hymn which he entitled, “Of the Voice at Midnight, and the Wise Virgins who meet their Heavenly Bridegroom.”
For comments on Miss Winkworth, translator, see [Hymn 236].
MUSIC. WACHET AUF, one of the greatest and most solemn melodies of evangelical Christendom, was composed by Nicolai. The present setting is by Michael Praetorius, 1571-1621, a writer on the theory of music and a composer of note. The melody was used by Bach in one of his cantatas and Mendelssohn used it in his St. Paul. Handel used the seventh and eighth lines of the melody with great effect in the “Hallelujah Chorus,” with the phrase, “The kingdom of this world.”
523. Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates
Georg Weissel, 1590-1635