Over the span of his short life, Michael Praetorius managed to compose over 1,000 vocal works for the Protestant church, the vast bulk of them being settings of the Lutheran hymn repertory. It seems he began early, by his association with Bartholomäus Gesius in Frankfurt. Then, in the nine volumes of Praetorius' Musae Sionae, he set the complete cycle of Lutheran hymns for the liturgical year at least three times for various forces and combinations of voices. Later, after meeting Schütz in Dresden (and more importantly, after being exposed there to the newest trends in Venetian polychoral music), Praetorius returned to some of the same beloved hymns in his 1619 Polyhymnia Caduceatrix. This time, each hymn receives a resplendently scored version for mixed choral and instrumental forces. Praetorius' version in this volume of the well-known Advent hymn, Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, uses fully 14 parts, including soloists, two choirs, and a five-part instrumental ensemble.

Praetorius' Wie schön leuchtet loosely reflects the "bar" form of the original hymn (AAB), and takes its familiar melody as a starting point. The first hymn phrase begins gently, with a pair of sopranos and keyboard accompaniment; a solo tenor joins them for the cadence. Immediately following, however, the complete nine-part choir and all instruments join for a resounding chordal repeat of the line. Praetorius follows much the same pattern for the second hymn line (which has the same melody): soli voices, beginning with three men this time, sing a contrapuntally active arrangement of the hymn melody, followed by a similarly brash and full choral phrase, once again in triple meter. For the contrasting third line (the Abgesang), Praetorius unleashes his imagination and produces even more interesting contrasts in texture. Parts of the choir insert small phrases into the soloists' lines, and many voices incessantly intone the joyous horn-call-like motive on the text "Lieblich! Freundlich!" After a final soloists' burst of active and imitative counterpoint, the full ensemble closes once again with the jaunty chordal setting.

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