October 14
The next cantata was premiered just two days later for Sexagesimae, the second Sunday before Lent. I already wrote about this on February 8th of this year, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to surface this breathtaking battle movement again.
If you have listened to some of the works I have already posted for the Cantata of the Day, you’ll notice immediately that the almost operatic drama and virtuosic trumpeters of this short chorale fantasia marks this as quite different from the rest. Regardless, this first movement of Cantata 126 is also in the chorale fantasia form, and you'll hear again the (now much faster) soprano notes high above singing the Lutheran chorale melody, as the voices below sing in imitative counterpoint.
The commanding musical material is no accidental flight of fancy: Bach here highlights the combative, radical text of one of Martin Luther’s late devotional hymns, which begins “Sustain us, Lord, with Your Word, / And fend off the murd'rous Pope and Turks.” One recalls the schism that Luther nailed into Christianity with his 95 Theses, away from the corrupt papacy and the overly-ritualized, far-removed relationship with God that the Catholic Church provided, and toward a personal relationship with the Word of God.
Love it !!!!