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 Leipzig for the 23rd Sunday after Trinity
and first performed it on 12 November 1724. It is based
on the hymn by Johann Christoph Rube (1692).
Bach 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, "o...(+)
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 Leipzig for the 23rd Sunday after Trinity
and first performed it on 12 November 1724. It is based
on the hymn by Johann Christoph Rube (1692).
Bach 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.
The opening chorus 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".
In the tenor aria, movement 2, the motif of the first
line "Gott ist mein Freund" (God is my friend) appears
again and again in the voice and the instruments. The
voice is "more convoluted" when the raging enemies and
the "Spötter", those who ridicule or mock, are
mentioned.
In movement 4, a bass aria with solo violin and the
oboes d'amore in unison, Bach changes seamlessly from
loud double-dotted music to "the most nonchalant
texture imaginable" in 6/8 time to illustrate the text
"But a helping hand suddenly appears", compared by John
Eliot Gardiner to "God's outstretched hand as painted
by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel".
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, French Horn &
Cello.
