◄ praise parthenogenetic

► Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her


24. Diacantus
(Lyrics: Paul Gerhardt, 1653,
melodies: Johann Crüger, 1653)

In his Christmas Oratorio J.S. Bach sets Paul Gerhardt's text Wie soll ich dich empfangen to the melody of the passion-song O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden – as common in the Protestant-Lutheran services of his time.

My adaptation confronts this melody with Johann Crüger's and develops a resulting new melody by measuring the interval differences between the two. Working 5 cycles through the combined melodies I musically composed the question that is asked in the text: how can the joy about Christ's birth be reconciled with the knowledge of his brutal self-sacrifice?

Bach's instrumentation of the chorale in his Christmas Oratorio can be heard here sounding in an iridescent timbral composition, in which time and again fragments of both underlying melodies shine through the surface.