Walter Meyer wrote:

>And now I have a question about the *Magnificat* itself, which I thought
>I knew quite well.  There was a choral passage played over the car radio
>that I did not recognize after the "Et exsultavit" instead of the "Quia
>respexit humilitatem" aria, which is followed by the choral "Omnes
>generationes" which was not what I was hearing.  ...

I don't know the Hickox recording, but you were not hallucinating.
The original version of Magnificat contains four movements, which Bach
himself took out later.  The one after "Et exsultavit" is indeed a choral
passage, with the text "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her".  There was
also a chorus "Freut euch und jubiliert" (to be sung after "Quia fecit"),
a chorus "Gloria" (after "Fecit potentiam"), and an unfinished duet
"Virga Jesse floruit" (after "Esurientes").  They formed a sort of
appendix with Bach's indication where they should be sung.

>Since the text of the Magnificat is, as I understand it, pretty much
>standard text taken from the second chapter of the Gospel According to
>St. Luke,

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to
choose from.  It's not different in liturgy.  Local customs varied
greatly, and here we deal with Lutheranism, so even papal guidelines
don't apply (and even in Roman Catholicism, music-liturgical customs
varied a great lot and often didn't adhere to the papal decrees).

>I can't imagine that this was a hitherto unknown passage that
>had been discovered.

On the contrary, it's a passage known to musicologists, but hidden from
the general public.  You know we don't want people to know too much
music...

>So, assuming that I wasn't hallucinating, and that
>the radio station hadn't inadvertently shuffled two recordings, can
>anybody tell me, based possibly upon the above identification of the
>performance, what I heard?

Vom Himmel hoch.

-Margaret Mikulska