page_title: Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her"
section_title: Variatio V
hierarchical_section_title: Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her" / Musical structure / Variatio V
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Die Große Silbermannorgel im Freiberger Dom, Freiberg, Sachsen
context_page_description: The Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her", BWV 769, are a set of five variations in canon for organ with two manuals and pedals by Johann Sebastian Bach on the Christmas hymn by Martin Luther of the same name. The variations were prepared as a showpiece for Bach's entry as fourteenth member of Mizler's Music Society in Leipzig in 1747. The original printed edition of 1747, in which only one line of the canon was marked in the first three variations, was published by Balthasar Schmid in Nuremberg. Another version BWV 769a appears in the later autograph manuscript P 271, which also contains the six trio sonatas for organ BWV 525–530 and the Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes BWV 651–668. In this later version Bach modified the order of the variations, moving the fifth variation into a central position, and wrote out all the parts in full, with some minor revisions to the score.
  These [variations] are full of passionate vitality and poetical feeling. The heavenly hosts soar up and down, their lovely song sounding out over the cradle of the Infant Christ, while the multitude of the redeemed "join the sweet song with joyful hearts."
context_section_description: In this variation, the canon is the melody of the chorale itself. It has three sections, the first and second further subdivided in two, building up to a majestic and complex climax in the final bars of the third section. In the first section, the two manual parts play the chorale line by line in inverted canon over a walking bass continuo stamped out in the pedal, first at an interval of sixth and then a third. In the second and third sections, the pedal part returns to the smooth lines of the cantus firmus.
  To an untrained ear, the voice-leading in the canon of Variatio IV is hardly noticeable and is imperceptible after 3 bars; the musical structure of the canons in Variatio V, however, is much clearer than any of the other variations. The mirror-inversion between the canonical voices in the sixth is immediately heard, mostly in plain crotchets of the firmus cantus; that is equally true for the conventional canonic parts and their inversions, in the third, second and ninth. In the third and ninth canons, the chorale melody is initially played reflected: the pleasure and anticipation of the listener is enhanced by hearing the true melody afterwards. In the autograph manuscript version, BWV 769a, the sequence of Variatio II and then Variatio V makes it much easier to follow the canonic parts. The striding quaver figures in the pedal part, however, are unusual and are a response to Bach's development from a baroque to a more modern style.
  In the second section, the pedal and the separate hands again play the chorale line by line in inverted canon, separated by an interval of a second  and then a ninth, with a free imitative part in the hand playing the canon and a free running semiquaver part in the other hand. The semiquavers occur first in the right hand with the imitative part above the left hand; then in the left hand with the imitative part this below the canon.  With the quaver canonic voices now accompanied by continuously flowing semiquavers, the feeling of endless movement in Variatio III and IV is now experienced in Variatio V, a new form of moto perpetuo. The musical texture is similar to that used previously in Vom Himmel kam der Engel Schar, BWV 607,  from the Orgelbüchlein, another chorale prelude for advent on the theme of descending angels.
  In the last section, marked forte, the pedal part plays the last line of the cantus firmus, with the first line in true and inverted forms in diminutio above it. The variation culminates over the closing pedal point with a stretto of all four lines, again with inversions and diminutio. At this point the manual parts, move to one keyboard: in the expansive pro organo pleno, there are now five voices, joined right at the end by a new sixth voice that heralds a restatement of the melodic theme. The supposed occurrence of the BACH motif shared between the two inner manual parts in the last bar did not occur in the original printing of BWV 769, where there is B flat (B in German) instead of a B natural (H in German); this was modified by editors in later editions.
  The compositional technique in Variatio V can be compared with the five-part organ work Nun komm der Heiden Heiland of Georg Friedrich Kauffmann and with Bach's earlier partita, O Gott, der fromme Gott, BWV 767. Referring to Scheibe's "sublime fire", Yearsley (2002) describes the overwhelming climax in the final stretto passage of Variatio V: "This contrapuntal density generates an expansion of the texture and with the accompanying dynamic boost bursts the shackles of counterpoint, erupting into expressive briliance and grandeur—the ultimate rhetorical summation".
caption: Silbermann Organ, 1714, Freiburg Cathedral
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