HOTC #10: LSB 395, O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright

This week we get not just the Lutheran Epiphany hymn, but also our introduction to another of the giants of Lutheran hymnody: Philipp Nicolai. We’ll also delve into some playing tips for what is arguably one of the most difficult hymntunes in Lutheran Service Book.

Church windows, St. John’s Church, Sharow, England, UK

The Author

Philipp Nicolai, commemorated in a window installed in the Paul-Gerhardt-Kirche in Lubben, Germany

Philipp Nicolai is one of those prodigious minds from the late Renaissance and early Baroque whose talent frankly beggars description. In the vein of Paul Gerhardt, who we discussed a few weeks ago during Advent, Nicolai was a Lutheran pastor (and son of a Lutheran pastor) and highly educated (at Erfurt and Wittenberg). He spent much of his theological career either outrunning the Catholic armies of the King of Spain or sparring with Calvinist theologians. Indeed, John Julian’s Dictionary of Hymnology (cited in full in Nicolai’s Hymnary.com article), describes most of his “polemical” works as, “often very violent and acrid in tone, and such as the undoubted sincerity of his zeal to preserve pure and unadulterated Lutheranism may explain, but cannot be said to justify.”

His poetic works, though of a smaller quantity, are of the highest quality, though two clearly stand above the rest: Wachet Auf, ruft uns die Stimme (LSB #516), and today’s subject, Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern. The pair have often been referred to as the King and Queen of the chorales, respectively (though I’ve also heard the appellations reversed, with Wie schon leuchtet referred to as the king and Wachet Auf referred to as the queen). Both were and are immensely popular, two of the most-beloved of all the Lutheran chorales.

Philipp Nicolai died on October 26, 1608, in Hamburg. His date of death, October 26, is the date on which the LCMS commemorates the Lutheran Hymnwriters: Nicolai, Johann Heerman, and Paul Gerhardt.

The interior of the Katherinenkirche, Hamburg, Germany

As an aside: Nicolai eventually wound up in the mighty (and abundantly wealthy) Hanseatic city of Hamburg, as pastor of the Katherinenkirche. The organ of the Katherinenkirche was considerable, and considered one of the most important musical attractions in Hamburg, a city filled with musical attractions (including one of the first operas in northern Europe). It would, later in the 17th Century, play host (as music director and organist) to the famous Lutheran composer Heinrich Scheidemann. Scheidemann’s students included Johann Adam Reincken (a Dutchman; Scheidemann had learned music from the great Dutch organ master Jan Sweelinck), and probably Dietrich Buxtehude (though this is uncertain). Reincken would live 79 years (an astonishing 68 of them as successor to Scheidemann at the Katherinenkirche), long enough to have heard a 35-year old J.S. Bach improvise on a chorale* at the organ, famously commenting “I thought that this art was dead, but I see that it lives in you.” It is easy to imagine that there were parishioners in Hamburg who heard Nicolai preach who would later know Scheidemann (the pair’s times in Hamburg were separated by at most 21, and probably fewer, years). Scheidemann taught Reincken, and Reincken knew (and likely briefly taught) Bach.

*the chorale was Wolfgang Dachstein’s An Wasserflussen Babylon (LSB #438, though with a different text), which Reincken had composed a lengthy chorale fantasia on earlier in his career

The Text

If Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland is the Lutheran Advent chorale (as I asserted nearly two months ago now), and Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich Her is the Lutheran Christmas chorale (a claim I also made a few weeks ago), then Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern is surely the Lutheran Epiphany chorale. Indeed, Lutheran Service Book has a wonderful habit of sticking all these staples of the chorale tradition toward the front of their respective sections of the hymnal, such that we’re hitting more than our fair share of them in the first few weeks of our journey through the hymnal (and causing me to fall wayyyyyyy behind on making recordings of them).

Nicolai’s text was originally seven verses, and still is so in The Lutheran Hymnal (it is hymn #343 in that book), however in Lutheran Book of Worship and Lutheran Worship, the second verse goes missing, and the order of the final two verses is backwards. Lutheran Service Book still includes only six verses, but returns the final two verses to their original order. Why editors would bother to omit one verse once you’ve already sung six of them is a bit beyond me. Once you’ve sung six verses, does one more really matter? But hey, they didn’t ask me.

The “Morning Star” reference is not, as one might imagine, a reference to the Star of Bethlehem, but rather a reference to Christ, the self-identified “…bright morning star.” of Revelation 22:16. This makes more sense when one understands the context in which Nicolai was composing this text: he had become pastor in the town of Unna, in Westphalia, in 1596, and a massive plague swept through the area the following year. At one point in August 1597, the death toll in Nicolai’s parish reached an astonishing 170 deaths in a single week. The hymn (as well as Wachet Auf, so quite the set of premiers, for a single hymnal!) was first published in 1599 in a collection called “Mirror of Joy of the Life Everlasting,” and the introduction to the hymn given in that book makes all the more sense given the context noted just earlier:

“A spiritual bridal song of the believing soul concerning Jesus Christ, her heavenly bridegroom, founded on the 45th Psalm of the prophet David”

— Frewdenspiegel deß ewigen Lebens, 1599

Psalm 45 is not, however, a terribly Epiphany-oriented reading, either. At some point in the past, this hymn became associated with Epiphany - Nicolai’s reference to Revelation was either taken to have a double meaning (or indeed Christ’s words in Revelations may have a double meaning, but I’m not a theologian so I’ll leave that to them), or simply glossed over, and Wie schon leuchtet became the Lutheran Epiphany chorale, as noted earlier. By the time the translators of Lutheran Book of Worship and Lutheran Worship got their hands on the text, its reputation as an Epiphany standard was extremely well-established, and the resulting translation (which Lutheran Service Book utilizes) reflects that.

The text reflects more the spirit of Psalm 45, rather than the actual words of Psalm 45, though bits and pieces do shine (no pun intended, I think?) through. The second verse, in particular, takes the “…most handsome of the sons of men;” from the second verse of the psalm and turns it into “Come, heav’nly Bridegroom, Light divine.” That’s a literary reach, I understand, but one that takes us straight up to St. Matthew 25 and the Parable of the Ten Virgins, from which text springs Nicolai’s other great work, Wachet Auf, ruft uns die Stimme. Clearly, in the midst of massive plague, this text was near and dear to Pastor Nicolai, being referenced here and being the bedrock material of his other great work from this time.

The third and fourth verses lift us from the imagery of life’s miseries - “Earth’s deep sadness” - and direct us toward the Means of Grace: the lines “Your Word and Spirit, flesh and blood/Refresh our souls with heav’nly food.” form a clear reference to the Lord’s Supper, for instance.

Dr. Daniel Zager, whose commentary on this hymn is contained in Lutheran Service Book: Companion to the Hymns, Vol. 1 (one of the sources we’re using for this blog) goes so far as to describe the final two verses of this hymn as “…among the greatest in Lutheran hymnic writing, as they express the joyful expectation of an eternity in the very presence of Jesus,” and it is truly difficult to argue with that. The language here is exultant (and the organ registrations should be too, but we’ll get to that in a minute), outstripping even many less-than-modest Easter hymns.

The Tune*

WIE SCHON LEUCHTET appears five times in Lutheran Service Book, four times in the key of D Major (LSB #391, LSB #395, LSB $488, and LSB #913) and once in Eb Major (LSB #822), the key it appeared in when included in The Lutheran Hymnal.

This tune is a lot of things, including (but not limited to):

one of the most instantly recognizable of all the chorales
one of the most difficult for the beginning or inexperienced organist (and hence many congregations)
one of the classics of the genre, a tune that has inspired composers of Lutheran church music for centuries, and provided them with the raw material for some true masterworks

We shall consider each of these points in turn.

The recognizability of this tune is built straight into the melody itself, which has two defining features: the major triad that forms the opening phrase of the first two sections of the hymn (which are identical to each other), and the repeated descending minor third (A-F#) and associated dominant-to-tonic motion that begins the final section of the chorale. The first phrase of the chorale is really elementary school music: a simple major chord, jumping from the root (D) to the fifth (A) before descending the chord back to the root (A-F#-D) and passing through a small decorative ornament (the two Bs on “…fair and…” in the first verse) to come to rest on the fifth (A) again. The second phrase picks up the A, and continues in the dominant key, before the third phrases returns us to the original D Major. A very simple, but very effective structure, which then repeats in the second section of the chorale. Nicolai does a very similar thing in Wachet Auf, where the opening of the first two sections of the chorale is also an arpeggiated major chord.

It should be noted here that The Lutheran Hymnal sets the tune in Eb Major, a half-step closer to Nicolai’s original key of F (!), but Lutheran Service Book pitches it in D Major, giving a much fuller, more powerful sound and making it more singable - a change I heartily agree with in this case.

Walk into any two Lutheran churches, and I’m guessing you’re going to hear vastly different versions of this hymn. I have yet to hear two organists play it precisely the same, in fact. The length, complexity, and metrical shifting involved in this chorale are a challenge, and different organists tackle those challenges in different ways. The key to understanding this hymn is to understand its structure, and hence the points at which the music reaches its goals. As with all hymnplaying, the organ must then be played in a way to lead the congregation through that structure. The congregation, recognizing that structure, can then sing confidently.

There’s an aside following here, meant for organists. If you’re just here for the hymn, and don’t want to read very nerdy organist things, I suggest skipping ahead to the large Bach manuscript further down the page.

It’s the structure of Wie schon leuchtet that many organists misunderstand, and I’ve outlined that structure here, so we can discuss it more fully:

Section A: the first three measures of the chorale

First phrase: the first measure (seven half notes), from “O…” to “…bright!” in the first verse
- The first five notes are the defining, recognizable chorale tune, outlining the key by bouncing between the three pitches of the D Major chord
- The harmonic movement is from tonic (D Major) to dominant (A Major), and cannot be allowed to wander - the entire phrase should be in one musical motion, like this:

rather than this:

Hear the difference? They may be half notes, but they shouldn’t and can’t plod - the half note has the beat in this hymn, so treat the quarter notes as eighth notes.

Second phrase: the next measure (six half notes this time), from “You…” to “…light,” in the first verse
- Note that there’s a rest to start the phrase - this shouldn’t be too long, and don’t let it get in the way of the momentum. The rest makes the A that follows it into a pickup note - “& 2 &” as my childhood music teacher used to say.
- This entire phrase is in the dominant key - A Major, with lots of spicey G#s and even a fun A# thrown in. Again, the goal is the end of the phrase, the A on “…light,” so don’t let the momentum go. Those quarter notes don’t have the beat, the half notes do!
Third phrase: the rest of this section, from “A-” in “Aglow…” to “-cy” in “…mercy!” in the first verse
- The meter shifts here as we head toward the cadence. The first two quarter notes are pickups to the half notes that follow them. This is reinforced by the meter of the poetry: “A-glow,” “with Grace,” where “A-” and “with” are not stressed syllables.
- The entire phrase rests in the tonic, D Major, but have some fun with the non-harmonic tones (suspensions and passing tones) that are preparing this cadence
- When you arrive on that final D Major chord - make sure we know we’ve arrived - we’re through three phrases, and have finished one section of the hymn!

Section A’: the second three measures of the chorale, which are essentially a repeat of Section A

See Section A, just discussed (they’re the same)

Section B: the final three measures of the chorale

This is where the rubber meets the road, so-to-speak. There are really only two phrases here, but they can each be subdivided into two parts
- The first phrase consists of the four half notes that begin this section of the chorale. They are one of the defining characteristics of this tune (most of the composers who’ve used this tune make a lot of them, that’s for sure). They can be grouped into pairs, and there should be a definite articulation between them, like this:

rather than this:

in order to carry the momentum forward. The descending minor thirds (A-F#) here give the tune a sing-songy quality, and the chords themselves (A Major to D Major, repeated, so dominant-tonic-dominant tonic) serve to halt the harmonic momentum of the chorale as a whole.

The second phrase in this section consists of the rest of the chorale, to the end, and can be seen to have two sections as well:
- Three sets of four quarter notes, with the harmonic motion moving tonic-to-dominant (in contrast to the section just finished, in which the harmonic pattern is the other way around), but ending on the vi chord - B minor - instead of the expected V chord - A Major. Whether this is a half cadence or a deceptive cadence is up to the music theory people, but it gives us a clue - this phrase isn’t over, and here comes one of the biggest controversies in being a Lutheran organist (probably):
  Is the final phrase an extension of the first phrase? In other words, should we go through the whole section from “Great” to “-ing” in “…possessing.” in the first verse without stopping?
  Organists who don’t think so will often insert a quarter rest between the octave leap at the end of the second-to-last measure. This is, I think, a holdover from The Lutheran Hymnal, which gave a fermata (which thankfully don’t exist in Lutheran Service Book) atop this note.

The offending fermata, at the end of the phrase in question, from *The Lutheran Hymnal*

It’s not unreasonable that some organists saw this as a hold or a breath mark, and gave plenty of space. That space reached the length of a quarter note at some point, and so lots of organists who append a quarter rest after this phrase ending, either consciously or unconsciously, like this:

Companion to the Hymns, Vol. 1 even goes out of its way (performance notes are rare in the Companion) to note this:

“Treating the last note before the final phrase as a quarter note, as written, helps propel the singing into the final phrase. Some organists, though, prefer to insert a quarter rest after the note.”

— Companion to the Hymns, Vol. 1, p. 179

I’m inclined to agree with the Companion - a large rest between the two final phrases completely kills the momentum that’s been built up by all those quarter notes that have just been sung, leaving a sort of awkward gap before the congregation launches into the final, triumphant phrase. I personally find it almost unsingable, as, reading the printed page, I assume the half note an octave higher will immediately follow the quarter note, as it says on the page. I play it that way, too, as you can hear in the recording at the top of this page.

Momentum is everything in hymnplaying - it’s the difference between hymns that plod and drag and hymns that excite and inspire - and in a complex tune like this, that’s more important than ever.

Before moving on, let’s take a moment to discuss the registrational options one might take over the course of this hymn. Registrational variation is important, especially in long hymns like this, to keep the accompaniment from becoming weary or tiresome, and to avoid the feeling that the music is stuck in some sort of rut. After all, we have all those stops - what else are they for?

Furthermore, this text is ripe for tone painting - for reinforcement of the emotional response inherent in the poetry and the music by matching the sound to the mood or attitude of the text. The Germans of Nicolai and Bach’s time had a term for this: Affektenlehre**.

The obvious point where the Affekt of this text changes is between the fourth and fifth verses - the opening line of the fifth verse frankly begs for a jump up to mixtures and big, strident sounds, what with the hymnwriter imploring us to “…let the harps break forth in sound!/Our joy be all with music crowned.” Abundant support for the congregation is always critical, but especially here, where the singers are in the next line said to have “Our voices gladly bending!”

Zimbelsterns are popular for this hymn, and while I usually think of them as a Christmans-and-possibly-Easter item, it’s an effect that does work here, particularly on the final verse.

*I realize this entire section would’ve been a lot easier to understand with pictures and excerpts from the music, but sadly the text in LSB is copyrighted, so here we are, with no illustrations <sad face>

** apologies for the Wikipedia link, but it really is the best layman’s description of this concept that I could find, and we’ll run into it again, for sure

A violin part from Bach’s cantata *Wie schon leuchtet, der Morgenstern*, BWV 1, in Bach’s own hand.

This hymn was one of the most popular sources for composers in the century-plus after its composition. As mentioned above, Nicolai had connections in the musical universe of northern Germany in the 17th Century, and aside from the popularity of the hymnbooks containing his work, these Hamburg connections can only have helped popularize his work. Hence his two monumental chorales becoming two of the most popular fascinations for composers in this period.

The hymn continues to be popular with church composers today, and this list can only be but a rough guide to some of the available compositions:

Michael Praetorius