Johann Sebastian Bach composed Cantata 140 in 1730 for the 27th Sunday after Trinity (November 25). As the church calendar only contains 27 Sundays in years when Easter is early, the cantata was not often performed. Today, however, it is a perennial favorite. Bach’s cantatas present the reading for the day and offer moral commentary in music, essentially becoming miniature sermons. Cantata BWV 140 relays the Parable of the Ten Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13). Ten women retire for the evening, five with oil in their lamps, five without. When Christ appears to them during the night in the form of a bridegroom, only the women prepared for the moment become his brides. The moral is clear: a faithful soul must always be ready for the possibility of Christ’s coming. The first of the cantata’s seven movements, “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme” (Sleepers, awake! A voice is calling) is a chorale fantasia. A chorale tune is heard in long notes in the soprano voices, while the lower voices and orchestra weave intricate counterpoint around it, suggesting both the diligence of those keeping watch in the towers and the “wise virgins’” anticipatory joy.
