Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält, BWV 1128

Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält is a chorale fantasia for organ composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, likely between 1705 and 1710.

[5][6] In the late 17th century, when he was not yet 15, Bach was already acquainted with the chorale fantasia genre, by such settings as Buxtehude's Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g'mein, BuxWV 210, and Reincken's An Wasserflüssen Babylon.

[8] Apart from Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält, there is only one other known chorale fantasia for organ by Bach: Christ lag in Todesbanden, BWV 718, which was composed before c. 1715.

[11] After he moved to Weimar in mid 1708, he revisited Mühlhausen several times in the next few years, for instance supervising the remodelling of the organ of the Divi Blasii according to his design, which was completed in 1709, and performing cantatas he composed for council election in 1709 and 1710 (BWV 1138.1 and 1138.2).

[11][12][13] Stylistic analysis, conducted by, among others, Jean-Claude Zehnder, indicates that Bach composed Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält between c. 1705 and c. 1710, or, more narrowly, in the c. 1707–1708 period.

[3][11] Justus Jonas's paraphrase of Psalm 124, "Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält", was first published in the Erfurt Enchiridion (1524).

[19] Bach's chorale fantasia is based on a setting of the hymn in bar form, first published in Wittenberg by Joseph Klug [de], in the second quarter of the 16th century (Zahn No. 4441a).

[3][4][20][21] In the chorale fantasia for organ, a genre as apparent in the 17th-century north German models by Buxtehude and Reincken which Bach knew, the melody of each line of a hymn stanza is treated separately: the treatment consisting of applying diverse techniques, such as echo, countermelodies and other embellishments or variations, to such fragments of the hymn tune, until all phrases of the chorale melody are treated consecutively.

According to the auction record the manuscript was once owned by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Johann Sebastian's eldest son, and predecessor of Kötschau as organist in Halle.

In 1852, to preserve his collection, Gotthold donated it to the Königsberg Library, where, 25 years later, Joseph Müller listed it in a catalogue describing "24 books of organ compositions by J. S. Bach," which contained as fascicle No.

5 "Fantasia Sopra il Corale Wo Gott der Herr nicht bey uns hält pro Organo à 2 Clav.

[3] As the chorale fantasia did not get included in the BGA, Wolfgang Schmieder listed it as a doubtful work in the second Appendix (Anhang) of the 1950 first edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV Anh.