In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to Margaret Bent, "a piece of music in several parts with words" is as precise a definition of the motet as will serve from the 13th to the late 16th century and beyond. The late 13th-century theorist Johannes de Grocheo believed that the motet was "not to be celebrated in the presence of common people, because they do not notice its subtlety, nor are they delighted in hearing it, but in the presence of the educated and of those who are seeking out subtleties in the arts".
In music, a chorale prelude or chorale setting is a short liturgical composition for organ using a chorale tune as its basis. It was a predominant style of the German Baroque era and reached its culmination in the works of J.S. Bach, who wrote 46 examples of the form in his Orgelbüchlein, along with multiple other works of the type in other collections.
Chorale settings refer to a wide variety of musical compositions, almost entirely of Protestant origin, which use a chorale as their basis. A chorale is a simple melody, often based on Gregorian chant, written for congregations to sing hymns. Chorale settings can be vocal, instrumental, or both.
In music, a chorale concerto is a short sacred composition for one or more voices and instruments, principally from the very early German Baroque era. Most examples of the genre were composed between 1600 and 1650.
Hieronymus Praetorius was a Northern German composer and organist of the late Renaissance and early Baroque whose polychoral motets in 8 to 20 voices are intricate and vividly expressive. Some of his organ music survives in the Visby Orgel-Tabulatur, which dates from 1611.
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140, also known as Sleepers Wake, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, regarded as one of his most mature and popular sacred cantatas. He composed the chorale cantata in Leipzig for the 27th Sunday after Trinity and first performed it on 25 November 1731.
Philipp Nicolai was a German Lutheran pastor, poet, and composer. He is most widely recognized as a hymnodist.
Sechs Chorale von verschiedener Art: auf einer Orgel mit 2 Clavieren und Pedal vorzuspielen, commonly known as the Schübler Chorales, BWV 645–650, is a set of chorale preludes composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. Johann Georg Schübler, after whom the collection came to be named, published it in 1747 or before August 1748, in Zella St. Blasii. At least five preludes of the compilation are transcribed from movements in Bach's church cantatas, mostly chorale cantatas he had composed around two decades earlier.
The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach is a 1968 film by the French filmmaking duo of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. It was their first full-length feature film, and reportedly took a decade to finance. The film stars renowned harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt as Johann Sebastian Bach and Christiane Lang as Anna Magdalena Bach. The orchestral music was performed by Concentus Musicus and conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. It is the first of several Straub-Huillet films to be based on works of classical music. The film was entered into the 18th Berlin International Film Festival.
Chorale fantasia is a type of large composition based on a chorale melody, both works for organ, and vocal settings, for example the opening movements of Bach's chorale cantatas, with the chorale melody as a cantus firmus.
"Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme" is a Lutheran hymn written in German by Philipp Nicolai, first published in 1599 together with "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern". It appears in German hymnals and in several English hymnals in translations such as "Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying", "Wake, O wake! with tidings thrilling", and "Up! Awake! From Highest Steeple". Johann Sebastian Bach based a chorale cantata on the hymn, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140, one of its many musical settings.
Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, BWV 38, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed the chorale cantata in Leipzig in 1724 for the 21st Sunday after Trinity and first performed it on 29 October 1724.
Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata Schwingt freudig euch empor, BWV 36, in Leipzig in 1731 for the first Sunday in Advent. He drew on material from previous congratulatory cantatas, beginning with Schwingt freudig euch empor, BWV 36c (1725). The Gospel for the Sunday was the Entry into Jerusalem, thus the mood of the secular work matched "the people's jubilant shouts of Hosanna". In a unique structure in Bach's cantatas, he interpolated four movements derived from the former works with four stanzas from two important Advent hymns, to add liturgical focus, three from Luther's "Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland" and one from Nicolai's "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern". He first performed the cantata in its final form of two parts, eight movements, on 2 December 1731.
"Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern" is a Lutheran hymn by Philipp Nicolai written in 1597 and first published in 1599. It inspired musical settings through centuries, notably Bach's chorale cantata Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 1, but also vocal and instrumental works by Baroque composers, Peter Cornelius, Felix Mendelssohn, Max Reger, Hugo Distler, Ernst Pepping, Mauricio Kagel and Naji Hakim.
Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata Ach Herr, mich armen Sünder, BWV 135 in Leipzig for the third Sunday after Trinity and first performed it on 25 June 1724. It is the fourth chorale cantata from his second annual cycle, and is based on the hymn by Cyriakus Schneegass.
Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren, BWV 137, in Leipzig for the twelfth Sunday after Trinity and first performed it on 19 August 1725. The chorale cantata is based on the hymn by Joachim Neander (1680).
Sleepers Awake may refer to:
"Vater unser im Himmelreich" is a Lutheran hymn in German by Martin Luther. He wrote the paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer in 1538, corresponding to his explanation of the prayer in his Kleiner Katechismus. He dedicated one stanza to each of the seven petitions and framed it with an opening and a closing stanza, each stanza in six lines. Luther revised the text several times, as extant manuscript show, concerned to clarify and improve it. He chose and possibly adapted an older anonymous melody, which was possibly associated with secular text, after he had first selected a different one. Other hymn versions of the Lord's Prayer from the 16th and 20th-century have adopted the same tune, known as "Vater unser" and "Old 112th".
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, Wf XV:2, is a German chorale motet composed around 1780 by Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, a son of Johann Sebastian Bach. It is based on Philipp Nicolai's hymn "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme". The motet in E-flat major is written for a four-part choir. It is structured in three movements, quoting in the last movement his fathers's chorale setting.
Chorale is the name of several related musical forms originating in the music genre of the Lutheran chorale: