Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott

BWV 720 performed by Theo Jellema
Stiftskirche St. Georg, Goslar-Grauhof

Go back

Behind the music

Story

Extra videos

Credits

Recalcitrant improvisation

The young Bach seems to be at work here

Luther’s Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott’is the battle hymn of the Reformation, so you might expect Bach to have made more than one organ arrangement of it. Yet it remained a one-off, undated piece, whose authorship is even doubted by some. The earliest copy is found in the Plauener Orgelbuch, which was compiled in 1708. So if it is indeed a work by Bach, then it is one from his younger years in Arnstadt, Mühlhausen or Weimar. The early version of BWV 720 requires three keyboards and one pedal, as well as a range of striking registers. These are exactly the features of the renovated organ of the Blasiuskirche in Mühlhausen, which was revised under Bach’s supervision and probably taken into use in 1709. So it has been suggested that although Bach had already been in Weimar for a year, he could have written this chorale arrangement for the organ in Mühlhausen, even though that does not correspond precisely to the dating of the first source.

But on listening to this quasi-improvisational fantasy, the tangled construction of the composition does not appear to be a special recommendation for the possibilities of this new organ. It is more reminiscent of the recalcitrant organ work he wrote when he was about twenty, which incurred the wrath of the church council in Arnstadt. Whether Bach’s preludes were too long or – on the rebound – too short (like the previously discussed BWV 726), his ‘viele wunderliche variationes’ always remained a thorn in their side. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott continues in this vein for four minutes.

BWV: 720
Title: Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott
Instrument: organ
Genre: organ works
Year: before 1708
City: Arnstadt/Mühlhausen/Weimar
Special notes: The arrangement is one of the group of a few dozen scattered organ chorales by Bach that cannot be traced back to a creation date or occasion.

Extra videos

Organist Theo Jellema

“I was happy to be playing 'Ein feste Burg' here in Grauhof. It's a work by the young Bach.He lived and worked not far from here.”

Vocal texts

Original

Translation

Credits

Release date

10 June 2016
Recording date

26 August 2015
Location

Stiftskirche St. Georg, Goslar-Grauhof
Organist

Theo Jellema
Organ

Christoph Treutmann, 1731
Film director and editor

Onno van Ameijde
Camera

Maarten van Rossem, Onno van Ameijde
Music production, editing and mix

Holger Schlegel
Interview

Onno van Ameijde
Producer

Jessie Verbrugh

Discover

Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend

organ works, BWV 726

Cello Suite no. 2 in D minor

chamber music, BWV 1008