Cantus Firmus and the Auditory Body: Reading Nicolai’s 
Chorale in BWV 140 as Traditionalization

RELIGIONS, cilt.17, sa.751, ss.1-13, 2026 (AHCI, Scopus)

Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
Cilt numarası: 17 Sayı: 751
Basım Tarihi: 2026
Doi Numarası: 10.3390/rel17070751
Dergi Adı: RELIGIONS
Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), Scopus, ATLA Religion Database, Index Islamicus, Linguistic Bibliography, Directory of Open Access Journals, Academic Search Ultimate (EBSCO), Religion Database (ProQuest)
Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1-13
Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
Manisa Celal Bayar Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

In the Lutheran church music tradition, the placement of pre-existing chorale melodies as

cantus firmus in new compositions constitutes a stable compositional practice extending

from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. Musicological literature has generally

treated this practice as a formal technique or theological reference; however, neither its

authoritative function nor its embedding within the auditory body of the congregation has

been systematically examined within a theoretical framework. This study addresses this

gap by taking Johann Sebastian Bach’s use of Philipp Nicolai’s 1599 chorale as cantus firmus

in the opening chorale fantasia of Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme BWV 140, 1731 (Wake,

Awake, for Night is Flying) as a two-layered analytical case. The study adopts Catherine Bell’s

concept of ritualization as developed in Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (1992) as its theoretical

framework, operationalizing two specific analytical concepts from within this framework:

traditionalization (the strategy of legitimizing the new by binding it to the authority of

the old) and ritualized body (the embodied internalization of ritual practice). The first

concept is employed to analyze the hierarchical contrast between the fixed cantus firmus

position of Nicolai’s chorale and the mobility of the surrounding polyphony; the second

is developed as an original analytical proposal examining how the chorale may function

as a structural spine within the auditory body of the congregation. The article argues that

Bach’s gesture of chorale placement can be understood not only as a musical technique or

theological reminder, but as both a traditionalization act that strategically invokes inherited

authority and a ritual structuring that may have been collectively experienced within the

auditory body of the listening congregation. This reading proposes a new perspective on

the cultural-strategic and embodied dimensions of compositional practices in Lutheran

liturgical music research, and aims to contribute methodologically to the analytical study

of Bach’s chorale cantatas at the intersection of ritual theory and musicology.