hal Kaiser March.

Bitter, in his Life of Bach, says:--

"The bicentenary Reformation Festival was celebrated in October and
November, 1717, and at Weimar especially it was, as an old chronicle
tells us, a great jubilee. Bach composed his cantata, 'Ein' feste
Burg,' for the occasion. In this piece it is clear that he had passed
through his first phase of development and reached a higher stage of
perfection."

Winterfeld is inclined to the same belief; but Spitta, in his exhaustive
biography of Bach, argues that it must have been written either for the
Reformation Festival of 1730, or for the two hundredth anniversary of
Protestantism in Saxony, May 17, 1739. The former date would bring its
composition a year after the completion of his great Passions music, and
four years before his still more famous "Christmas Oratorio,"--a period
when he was at the height of his productive power; which favors the
argument of Spitta, that in 1717 a chorus like the opening one in the
cantata was beyond his capacity.[9] In the year 1730 Bach wrote three
Jubilee cantatas, rearranged from earlier works, and Spitta claims that
it was only about this period that he resorted to this practice. Further,
he adds that "the Chorale Chorus [the opening number], in its grand
proportions and vigorous flow, is the natural and highest outcome of
Bach's progressive development, and he never wrote anything more
stupendous."

The cantata has eight numbers, three choruses and five solos. The solo
numbers are rearranged from an earlier cantata, "Alles was von Gott
geboren" ("All that is of God's creation"), written for the third Sunday
in Lent, March 15, 1716. The opening number is a colossal fugue based
upon a variation on the old melody and set to the first verse of the
Luther hymn. It is followed by a duet for soprano and bass, including the
second verse of the hymn and an interpolated verse by Franck,[10] who
prepared the text. The third and fourth numbers are a bass recitative and
soprano aria, the words also by Franck, leading up to the second great
chorale chorus set to the words of the third stanza of the hymn,

"And were the world all devils o'er,"

of which Spitta says:--

"The whole chorus sings the _Cantus firmus_ in unison, while the
orchestra plays a whirl of grotesque and wildly leaping figures,
through which the chorus makes its way undistracted and never misled,
an illustration of the third verse, as grandiose