page_title: Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her"
section_title: History, origins and genesis
hierarchical_section_title: Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her" / History, origins and genesis
caption_attribution_description: Gesangbuch of Martin Luther, double page of Christmas Carol Von Himmel hoch da komm' ich her, Valentin Bapst Erben, Leipzig
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 June 1747, Bach was admitted as the fourteenth member of the "Correspondierde Societät der Muscialischen Wissenschaften" (Corresponding Society for the Musical Sciences), a society devoted to musical scholarship founded in Leipzig in 1738  by Lorenz Christoph Mizler. To mark his admission he not only presented a version of the Canonic Variations, but also a portrait by Elias Gottlob Haussmann in which Bach holds a copy of his canon triplex a 6 voci  BWV 1076 towards the viewer. During the last ten years of his life, Bach had become preoccupied musically with canons and canonic fugues, already much developed in the Parts III and IV of the Clavier-Übung—the Organ Mass BWV 552, BWV 669–689, the four canonic duets BWV 802–805 and the Goldberg Variations BWV 988—as well as the Musical Offering BWV 1079 and the Art of the Fugue BWV 1080. The triplex canon itself became part of the Fourteen Canons BWV 1087, preserved in one surviving copy of the Goldberg Variations. Mizler seems to have been unaware of the numerological significance that the number fourteen had to Bach (B+A+C+H=14).
  The Canonic Variations are based on the Christmas Hymn "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her", for which text and melody, both by Martin Luther, were published in 1539:
  The chorale itself was set three times by Bach in his Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248, and before that as an addition for Christmas in his Magnificat in E-flat major, BWV 243a. Bach also used the hymn melody in earlier chorale preludes, notably BWV 606 (Orgelbüchlein), 700, 701 and 738, with accompanying motifs above and below the melodic line that were to recur in BWV 769. There are also similarities with several of the Goldberg Variations, notably the third and thirteenth, with shared motifs, keyboard technique and general structure. In the case of the earlier harpsichord work, however,  the variations are written over a fixed bass line, while BWV 769 is based on a melody.
  During this period Bach had been criticized vociferously by the Danish composer Johann Adolph Scheibe for producing music that was too old-fashioned, abstract and artificial. Scheibe had described Bach's output as "altogether too much art" and had referred to the canons as outmoded follies ("Thorheiten"). However, despite the logic of the canon that underlies the Canonic Variations, Bach succeeded in producing a work which, far from being abstract and severe, was imbued with an affect of "beauty" and "naturalness", quite modern for its time and in keeping with the spirit of galante music. The musical language of Bach in BWV 769 is as different from his other organ music as that of the Goldberg Variations is from his earlier harpsichord music. Combining complex counterpoint with the spiritual associations of Advent and Christmas, Bach's harmony and keyboard technique produce a musical style "at times strangely new, at others very approachable" yet "elusive enough to prompt admirers to search outside music for suitable expressive metaphor." As Williams (2003, p. 518) puts it, the "canons create harmonies, melodies and progressions not only otherwise unheard but strangely rapt and intense."
  Various stylistic elements in the Canonic Variations recall the compositions of Bach's predecessors and contemporaries. The running figures in the first variation can be found in Toccata No.12 of Georg Muffat (1690) and in the keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. The canon in the second variation is close in spirit to the Canons Mélodieux for two instruments of Georg Philipp Telemann. The galant figures  of the free line in the third variation are similar to those promoted by Joachim Quantz in his 1752 treatise on flute playing. The elaborate ornamentation of the fourth variation uses many devices from his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's treatise on keyboard technique (1753, 1762); the final pedal point harks back to those of the chorale preludes of Dieterich Buxtehude, for example in his setting of "Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verdebt", BuxWV 183. The walking pedal-bass beneath the canon at the beginning of the fifth variation is si
caption: Martin Luther: Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her, Bapst Gesangbuch in Leipzig, 1567
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