Wohl dem, der sich auf seinen Gott (Fortunate the
person who upon his God), BWV 139, is a church cantata
by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed the chorale
cantata in his second year in Leipzig for the 23rd
Sunday after Trinity. The prescribed readings for the
Sunday were from the Epistle to the Philippians, "our
conversation is in heaven" (Philippians 3:17–21), and
from the Gospel of Matthew, the question about paying
taxes, answered by Render unto Caesar... (Matthew
22:15–22). The cantata i...(+)
Wohl dem, der sich auf seinen Gott (Fortunate the
person who upon his God), BWV 139, is a church cantata
by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed the chorale
cantata in his second year in Leipzig for the 23rd
Sunday after Trinity. The prescribed readings for the
Sunday were from the Epistle to the Philippians, "our
conversation is in heaven" (Philippians 3:17–21), and
from the Gospel of Matthew, the question about paying
taxes, answered by Render unto Caesar... (Matthew
22:15–22). The cantata is based on the hymn in five
stanzas by Johann Christoph Rube (1692). It is sung to
the melody of "Machs mit mir, Gott, nach deiner Güt"
by Johann Hermann Schein (1628). An unknown poet kept
the first and the last stanza as movements 1 and 6 of
the cantata. He derived the inner movements as a
sequence of alternating arias and recitatives from the
inner stanzas. He based movement 2 on stanza 2,
movements 4 and 5 on stanzas 3 and 4, and inserted
movement 3, based on the gospel. According to
Hans-Joachim Schulze in Die Welt der Bach-Kantaten
(vol. 3), Andreas Stöbel, a former co-rector of the
Thomasschule is a likely author of the chorale cantata
texts, since he had the necessary theological
knowledge, and Bach stopped the cantata sequence a few
weeks after he died on 31 January 1725.
Bach first performed the cantata on 12 November 1724.
He performed it again between 1732 and 1735, and
between 1744 and 1747. For the second movement, the
part for an obbligato violin is extant, but the part of
a second obbligato instrument, possibly a second violin
or an oboe d'amore, is missing.
This, the opening chorus "Wohl dem, der sich auf seinen
Gott" (Fortunate the person who upon his God) is a
chorale fantasia. Strings and the two oboes d'amore
play concertante music, to which the soprano sings the
cantus firmus, and the lower voices interpret the text,
speaking of "child-like trust of the true believer" in
the first section, of "all the devils" in the second,
"he nonetheless remains at peace" in the third. The key
is E major, a rare, "rather extreme" key at Bach's
time, as musicologist Julian Mincham notes: only about
a third of Bach's chorale cantatas begins in a major
key at all, and only two in E major, the other being
Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben? BWV 8, "a musing
on death and bereavement and one of his most personal
works".
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wohl_dem,_der_sich_auf_s
einen_Gott,_BWV_139).
Although originally scored for four vocal soloists
(soprano, alto, tenor and bass), a four-part choir, two
oboes d'amore, two violins, viola, and basso continuo,
I created this arrangement for Flute, Oboe & Strings (2
Violins, Viola & Cello).
PARTITION