In another beautiful addition to the site ‘All of Bach’ Dorien Schouten plays the chorale ‘Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten’.
The text goes like this:
Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten
Und hoffet auf ihn allezeit,
Den is wunderlich erhalten
In all Kreuz und Traurigkeit.
Wer Gott, dem Allerhöchsten, traut,
Der hat auf keinen Sand gebaut.
The organist believes that he hears war violence in the lower voices. And also the trumpets that Gideon used to chase the enemy away. They bring to my mind a prayer: ‘God help me, Lord make haste to help me’. I hear an unstoppable gallop in the accompaniment, as if Bach saw a knight on horseback, hastily on his way to rescue a damsel in distress.
And yes, this I believe: so hastily ‘the Lord is ever on his way to save us also’.
