Wake, O Wake! With Tidings Thrilling

Lyrics

Wake, O wake! With tidings thrilling
the watchmen all the air are filling,
arise, Jerusalem, arise!
Midnight strikes! No more delaying,
'The hour has come!' we hear them saying,
'where are ye all, ye virgins wise?
The bridegroom comes in sight,
raise high your torches bright!’
Alleluia!
The wedding song swells loud and strong:
go forth and join the festal throng.

Zion hears the watchmen shouting,
her heart leaps up with joy undoubting,
she stands and waits with eager eyes;
see her friend from heaven descending,
adorned with truth and grace unending!
Her light burns clear, her star doth rise.
Now come, thou precious crown,
Lord Jesus, God's own son!
Alleluia!
Let us prepare to follow there,
where in thy supper we may share.

Every soul in thee rejoices;
from earth and from angelic voices
be glory given to thee alone!
Now the gates of pearl receive us,
thy presence never more shall leave us,
we stand with angels round thy throne.
Earth cannot give below
the bliss thou dost bestow.
Alleluia!
Grant us to raise, to length of days
the triumph-chorus of thy praise.

History

"Wake, O wake! With tidings thrilling" is the English Advent hymn made from Philipp Nicolai's German chorale "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme". Nicolai (1556-1608), a Lutheran pastor, took a post at Unna in Westphalia in 1596. Plague struck the town in 1597, and sources describe more than half of its roughly 2,400 residents dying between July 1597 and January 1598. The hymn is generally dated to this time of crisis, with sources giving 1597 or 1598 as the year of writing. It was first published in 1599 in his devotional book Frewden Spiegel deß ewigen Lebens ("Mirror of Joy"), printed at Frankfurt, alongside his other great chorale, "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern".

The text has three stanzas and is based on the parable of the Ten Virgins in Matthew 25:1-13, the bridegroom arriving at midnight and the wise virgins with their lamps ready. The first letters of Nicolai's three German stanzas spell W-Z-G, which is generally regarded as a tribute to a former pupil, Count Wilhelm Ernst of Waldeck, who died in 1598. Nicolai is also credited with the melody, WACHET AUF, which hymnary.org lists under his name. Hymnologists note possible influences from older tunes, including Hans Sachs's "Silberweise" and "In dulci jubilo", though the similarities are described as limited or uncertain. The tune has long been nicknamed the "King of Chorales", a phrase traced to the nineteenth-century writer Christian David Friedrich Palmer.

The English words sung here are the translation by Francis Crawford Burkitt (1864-1935), a Cambridge professor of divinity and a layman when appointed Norrisian Professor in 1905. They first appeared in The English Hymnal (1906), where the hymn is number 12 and credited to "F. C. B.". This is a different translation from Catherine Winkworth's "Wake, awake, for night is flying" (Lyra Germanica, second series, 1858). One hymnological account calls Burkitt's version the most popular in England, and notes that it leaves out the harp-and-cymbals reference and the 1 Corinthians 2:9 allusion of the original's third stanza.

The chorale also has a celebrated place in concert music. Johann Sebastian Bach based his church cantata Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (BWV 140) on Nicolai's text and melody for the 27th Sunday after Trinity, first performed in Leipzig on 25 November 1731; the chorale is used in three of its seven movements. One hymnological account notes that Bach's form of the melody differs slightly from Nicolai's; a later harmonisation by Mendelssohn appears in his oratorio St Paul (1836).

Performance

This recording, published on the church's YouTube channel on 9 December 2024, runs about 4 minutes 30 seconds and sets all three verses of the Burkitt translation. Its description names the Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields as the performers.

Sources: hymnary.org · hymnologyarchive.com · en.wikipedia.org · patrickcomerford.com · Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields recording and Words book