Schlage doch, gewünschte Stunde (Haste to strike, oh longed for hour), BWV 53, is an aria for alto, bells, strings and continuo.

In 1955, it was suggested by the Bach scholar Karl Anton that the aria's composer was more likely to be a member of Melchior Hoffmann's circle.

However, Alfred Dürr did not include it in his 1971 book Die Kantaten von Johann Sebastian Bach, based on the Bach-Jahrbuch 1955.

[9] In 1761, Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf offered manuscript copies of the aria in a catalogue printed for the Michaelmas fair in Leipzig.

[5][6][10][11] Johann Kirnberger added this copy to the Amalienbibliothek – the library of his employer Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia.

In the Bach-Jahrbuch of 1955 (published 1956), Karl Anton [de] described the aria as being extracted from a multi-movement cantata which originated in the circle around Hoffmann.

[17] In 1994 the musicologist Peter Wollny conjectured that the aria BWV 53 might have been part of the funeral music by Hoffmann, commissioned for the memorial service at Halle on 1 May 1713, to mark the death of Frederick I of Prussia in February 1713.

[25] The title of the cantata is rendered In English as "Strike, O Bell" in the Oxford Orchestral Series, as "Strike thou ear" in the edition of Novello & Co and as "Sound your knell" in the editions of Breitkopf & Härtel and Augener & Co.[27][20] In a middle section, the angels are asked to open heavenly meadows, to see Jesus soon ("Kommt, ihr Engel, … Öffnet mir die Himmelsauen, meinen Jesum bald zu schauen").

[31] When Bach redesigned the organ of the Blasius church in Mühlhausen in 1708, he added a novelty: a register with bells (chimes) in the pedalboard.

In the aria, the tolling bells and continuo play in concert, echoed in the bell-like accompaniment of the crotchets in the violins.

[15] in 1999 the discographer Martin Elste singled out the recordings of Leisner and of Hildegard Hennecke [de], conducted by August Wenzinger in 1951, as being noteworthy.

In 1992 the choreographer Mark Morris set BWV 53 as a pas de deux for a female and male dancer.

It was titled Beautiful Day in explicit reference to Morris's 1985 pas de deux One Charming Night (to music of Henry Purcell).

Morris's biographer, Joan Acolella, described "Beautiful Day" as one of his most sublime dances—"intimate" with no vestiges of the perversity of the 1985 piece.

[67] In a review in The New York Times, the critic Jack Anderson felt however that the piece was "choreographically rigid" with too much adherence to the musical score.