page_title: Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn, BWV 132
section_title: 1
hierarchical_section_title: Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn, BWV 132 / Music / 1
caption_attribution_description: English: Bach's cantata "Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn", BWV 132, autograph score, BB Mus. ms. Bach P60; Bl 2
context_page_description: Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn, BWV 132 in Weimar in 1715 for the fourth Sunday of Advent and led the first performance on 22 December 1715.
  Bach had taken up regular cantata composition a year before when he was promoted to concertmaster at the Weimar court, writing one cantata per month to be performed in the Schlosskirche, the court chapel in the ducal Schloss. Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn was his first cantata for the fourth Sunday in Advent. The libretto by the court poet Salomo Franck is related to the day's prescribed gospel reading, the testimony of John the Baptist. Franck derives from it thoughts about baptism as a preparation of the individual Christian who is addressed as a limb of Christ.
  Bach structured the music in six movements of alternating arias and recitatives, and scored it for a small ensemble of four vocal parts, oboe, strings and continuo. The voices are combined only in the closing chorale, the fifth stanza of Elisabeth Cruciger's hymn "Herr Christ, der einig Gotts Sohn".
context_section_description: The first aria, "Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn!" (Prepare the paths, prepare the road!), is in da capo form in a 6/8 time signature, accompanied by the full ensemble. The soprano renders her calls to prepare the ways in melismas of several measures of semiquavers. John Eliot Gardiner, who conducted the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage in 2000, describes the character of the movement of "insouciant grace and fleet-footed buoyancy befitting a slowish gigue  or a French loure." The oboe adds virtuoso figuration and trills, reminiscent of Bach's secular music. The aria is concluded by rejoicing calls: "Messias kömmt an" (The Messiah arrives).
caption: First page of the autograph score, titled "Concerto Dom. Adventus 4ta. â 1 Hautb. 2 Violini. Viola. 4 Voci.".[9]
exif: {}