to Mary. 1 The first movement, "" ('How beautifully the morning star shines'), is a stately, richly coloured chorale fantasia for the chorus. The of the chorale melody is sung in long notes of dotted minims by the sopranos. A substantial orchestral 12-bar ritornello or sinfonia begins the movement, with the solo instruments in the foreground; its wide harmonic range contrasts with the chorale, which remains mostly in the tonic key of F major. Bach achieves "unusual animation" by setting the hymn not in common time but . The scintillating semiquaver passagework of two solo concertante violins illustrate the sparkle of the morning star. A baroque pastoral imagery is established by the addition of two other pairs of solo instruments which play pronouncedly below the range of the higher solo violin bariolage, resulting in a transparent multilayered musical texture: the two pairs of horns and oboes da caccia, all associated with the hunt and nature, evoking a bucolic landscape. The text of the hymn is reflected in the music iconography: the horn calls signify the majesty of the king, while the virtuosic concertante violin passagework signifies the morning star and joy in the universe. Musical analysis of the chorale fantasia makes specific references to the 10 lines of the hymn text; an English metrical translation is given here as an ad hoc composite, combining two early 18th-century sources, the Lyra Davidica and the Psalmodia Germanica, as well as a late 19th-century translation by M. Woolsey Stryker. The 12-bar sinfonia is based on themes that are derived directly from the cantus firmus (notated here in the soprano clef); in particular the leap of a fifth in the opening theme and the recurring triads. Thus, as conductor John Eliot Gardiner notes, the movement begins intimately with a phrase of the second solo violin, with an orchestral tutti as response. The phrase is reprised a fifth higher by the first solo violin, again answered by the full orchestra. An inversion of the last three quavers in the first theme provides a second theme, which is heard amongst the three different solo instrumental groups—horns, oboes da caccia and violins—and is echoed individually, before an orchestral tutti on a cadence, heralding the entrance of the soprano. The sinfonia is similar in structure to a concerto grosso where different pairs of solo instruments compete against each other. After the sinfonia, the first line of the soprano