The pregnant Mary visiting her cousin Elizabeth – this is the context that Luke assigns to Mary's song (called the ‘Magnificat’ in the Latin church tradition) at the beginning of his Gospel. This song, written in Greek, is composed of various quotations from the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the biblical writings from Hellenistic Judaism, most of which was written in Alexandria between 250 and 100 BC. Luke uses it to create a new song that already points to essential features of Jesus' philosophy, with a special emphasis on Jesus' understanding of God, which discovers divine will in his commitment to the oppressed and in taking the greatness of every human being seriously.

In the church prayer tradition, the Magnificat is prayed at the end of each Vespers, the evening prayer of the church. Because Vespers was always celebrated solemnly with music and singing, many settings of this Marian song were created in the history of sacred music. The best known are Vivaldi's and Bach's settings, which last up to half an hour. 

Here I would like to draw attention to a forgotten setting of the Magnificat by Johann David Heinichen. Heinichen's Magnificat was also performed at the end of solemn vespers services in the Dresden Court Church. And because the sacred works composed for Dresden were not published or printed later, but were intended privately for the Dresden court, these works were hardly ever performed until the end of the 20th century.
Heinichen was initially more of an opera composer, studying Italian music in Venice, where he enjoyed his first successes. His fame in Venice led to him being summoned to the music-loving court of Dresden. However, when Augustus the Strong dissolved the opera company, Heinichen was commissioned to take over responsibility for church music in the Catholic court chapel from 1720 onwards. Although Heinichen composed in Dresden at almost the same time as Johann Sebastian Bach in Leipzig, the more Italianate style of his music differs greatly from Bach's, being more modern, so to speak, even though Heinichen was just as much a scholar of basso continuo as Bach. Heinichen also wrote a treatise on thorough bass during his later years, when he composed his extensive body of sacred music (12 masses, many psalms, 1 Passion oratorio, 8 Magnificats and much more). ‘Der General-Bass in der Composition’ (Dresden 1728) is considered one of the most important music-theoretical writings of the 18th century. The Magnificat in A major captivates with its brevity, its division into individual musical numbers and the varied contrast of the different affects of the setting of the biblical texts to music. The Magnificat in A major is considered one of the last works by Heinichen, who died in 1729, probably of tuberculosis.

Listen here! (approx. 12 ½ min.)