The Chorale "Wachet auf" in Mendelssohn's Paulus

Felix Mendelssohn was an avid artist as well as a composer. In 1843, he drew this picture of the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where Johann Sebastian Bach had been Cantor from 1723-1750.

Felix Mendelssohn was an avid artist as well as a composer. In 1843, he drew this picture of the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where Johann Sebastian Bach had been Cantor from 1723-1750.

In 1829, at the age of 20, Felix Mendelssohn directed the first performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion since Bach’s death in 1750. Felix and his sister, the composer Fanny Mendelssohn, had grown up studying harmony with a Bach specialist, Carl Friedrich Zelter. The siblings’ grandmother, Bella Salomon, encouraged Felix’s interest by arranging for a copy of Bach’s rare St. Matthew Passion to be made as a gift for the teenage Felix around 1823 or 1824.

By 1829, Felix Mendelssohn had completed the research, editing, copying, organization and rehearsal required to direct the Berlin Singakademie choir in a performance of the St. Matthew Passion, and in doing so, he more or less single-handedly began a revival of interest in Bach’s music which continues unabated to this day.

Mendelssohn’s fascination with Bach led him to experiment with bringing Bach’s techniques into his own compositions. Five years after his revival of the St. Matthew Passion, Mendelssohn began one of his boldest neo-Baroque compositions: an oratorio based on the life of St. Paul. 

Mendelssohn’s Paulus (completed 1836), known in English as St. Paul, sets text from the biblical Book of Acts, as well as commentary poetry in a libretto by Mendelssohn’s friend, the Lutheran pastor Julius Schubring. Bach had also used both Scripture and contemporary poetry in his St. Matthew Passion. Also like Bach, Mendelssohn inserted Lutheran chorales, or hymns, into his musical life of St. Paul, the most central of which is “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” (Sleepers, Wake).

This chorale, originally written by Philipp Nicolai around 1599, was familiar to Mendelssohn’s contemporary German listeners (though some were surprised to hear it in a concert hall instead of church). The tune is familiar to Bach-admirers as the basis of Bach’s Cantata No. 140. “Wachet auf” appears three times in that cantata, most famously in the middle movement, where Bach layers the phrases of the chorale over a graceful countermelody. Most listeners know this movement simply as Bach’s “Sleepers, Awake,” either from the choral cantata, or from Bach’s own arrangement for organ.

“Wachet auf” was a perfect chorale for Mendelssohn’s take on the story of St. Paul. The oratorio’s libretto emphasizes themes of calling and of light, both of which are central to the chorale text.

Awake, the voice calls to us … 
…rise up and take your lamps…
…Zion hears the watchmen singing …
…Her light becomes bright, her star rises…

Mendelssohn connects these images with the account of Paul’s conversion from Acts 9, in which Paul is stopped on the road to Damascus by a bright light and a voice from Heaven. That moment of Paul’s encounter with Jesus becomes the oratorio’s emotional center. Mendelssohn highlights this moment with two powerful uses of the chorale tune “Wachet auf:” first, foreshadowing Paul’s transformation, then marking the moment of his conversion.

Mendelssohn opens the oratorio with an orchestral overture that prefigures the story to come, a move much more reminiscent of nineteenth-century opera than of Bach’s sacred music. However, Mendelssohn gives a Bachian cast to the his overture by basing it on our chorale, “Wachet auf.” The overture opens with a simple statement of the chorale in the wind section of the orchestra. The use of winds suggests the sound of a pipe organ, perhaps reminding Mendelssohn’s listeners of hearing this familiar hymn in church. 

Felix Mendelssohn in 1834, the year he began writing Paulus.

Felix Mendelssohn in 1834, the year he began writing Paulus.

After the chorale is stated, Mendelssohn begins a plaintive fugue. Fugue is a musical form from the Baroque: it was slightly archaic in Mendelssohn’s time, and highly associated with Bach. In a fugue, a short musical motif, called a subject, is explored in a texture of multiple simultaneous melodic lines (this texture is called counterpoint). A recognizable feature of fugue is its opening, in which every melodic line, or voice, enter the music in succession, each stating the fugue subject—something like the various voices singing a round like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” entering the song one after another. 

Mendelssohn’s fugue subject here is a rather frustrated one: it begins by ascending a five-note scale, then suddenly drops down the large interval of a major ninth, landing much lower than it began. Mendelssohn develops this subject in a fugue that grows increasingly stormy, not unlike Paul’s mood before his conversion, when he is still known as Saul and heads for Damascus with “Drohen und Mordern” (threats and murder) to persecute the new sect known as Christians. 

However, the chorale’s call remains. The opening phrase of “Wachet auf” starts appearing from time to time, overtop the busy fugal texture. This technique of layering one slow melody with other musical material is called cantus firmus, and if it feels familiar, that’s because it’s exactly what Bach did with the melody of “Wachet auf” in his “Sleepers, Awake.”

In Mendelssohn’s overture, the recurring chorale melody becomes increasingly insistent, while the fugue becomes increasingly turbulent. The conflict comes to a head near the close of the overture (around 5:34 in the recording below) and the chorale suddenly triumphs, bursting into the texture from the brass section. The fugal material suddenly transitions into a major mode, which changes its character from anxiety to energetic joy. Paul will experience a similar transformation after his Damascus road conversion, when his formerly murderous energy is redirected toward sharing the gospel.

After this introduction, the audience does not hear the chorale tune “Wachet auf” again until near the end of the oratorio’s first act. As the story unfolds, we see fighting religious factions, the martyrdom of St. Stephen, and the determination of religious leader Saul to quash the new sect that differs from his own. 

Then comes the moment on the road to Damascus where Saul is knocked from his horse at the appearance of a bright light. Here, Mendelssohn diverges from his Bachian model: instead of using a deep bass voice for the words of Christ, as Bach did in the St. Matthew Passion, he uses a trio of women’s voices. The trio’s high range and dissonant harmonies portray blinding, otherworldly light.

Narrator (tenor): And as he was on the way and coming near to Damascus, a light came upon him suddenly from heaven, and he fell to the earth and heard a voice, which said to him,

The Voice of Jesus (Women’s Chorus): “Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

Narrator: But he said, 

Saul (baritone): “Lord, who are you?”

Narrator: The Lord said to him,

The Voice of Jesus: “I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.”

Narrator: And he said, with trembling and apprehension, 

Saul: “Lord, what do you want me to do?”

Narrator: The Lord said to him,

The Voice of Jesus: “Rise up and go into the city, and there a man will tell you what you should do.”

Mendelssohn follows this moment with a joyful chorus, anticipating Saul’s salvation: 

Open, become light! For your light comes, and the glory of the Lord is upon you. For behold, darkness covers the kingdom of earth, and dark covers the people. But the Lord rises above you, and his glory shines upon you.

Then comes the warm, inviting moment that Mendelssohn foreshadowed in his overture. The choir sings a simple, accessible rendition of the first stanza of “Wachet auf.” When Bach did this at the close of his Canata No. 140, it was a chance for his church congregation to sing along, and so join the story his music was telling. When Mendelssohn’s listeners heard this chorale in the concert hall, they knew this fine old hymn so well that it offered them a bridge between Mendelsoshn’s dramatic story and their own worship lives. We sing this hymn in English every Advent at Ascension Parish, and so perhaps this chorale will help you to find a connection with Paul’s journey from darkness into light.

Awake, the voice cries to us,
the watchmen, high upon the pinnacle, say,
“Wake up, City of Jerusalem!
Wake, the bridegroom is coming,
stand up, take your lamps.”
Hallelujah!
“Make yourselves ready for eternity.
You must come to meet him.”