指揮： カール・リヒター Karl Richter
ミュンヘン・バッハ合唱団・管弦楽団 Münchener Bach Chor & Orchester
Edith Mathis, Soprano Anna Reynolds, Alt Peter Schreier, Tenor Theo Adam, Bass
1972
Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn (Prepare the paths, prepare the road), 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". The music of the chorale, which was possibly on a different sheet, is lost but can be replaced by a setting of the same stanza in a different cantata. In his composition, Bach follows Franck's Baroque imagery closely, illustrating for example the baptismal water.