Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn' ihn, BWV 1127

"Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn' ihn", BWV 1127, is Johann Sebastian Bach's October 1713 setting of a poem in 12 stanzas by Johann Anton Mylius, Superintendent of Buttstädt, a town in the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar. The poem is an acrostic dedicated to Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, on his birthday. Bach, at the time employed as court organist by the Duke, set Mylius's ode as an aria in strophic form, that is a melody for soprano accompanied by continuo for the stanzas, alternated with a ritornello for strings and continuo. When all stanzas are sung, a performance of the work takes around 45 to 50 minutes.
The work was likely first performed on the Duke's birthday. The original print of Mylius's poem, with Bach's composition written on two pages at the end, was archived in Weimar, where it remained unnoticed for nearly three centuries, accidentally twice escaping a devastating fire, in 1774 and in 2004, until it was rediscovered in May 2005. After the discovery and publication of Bekennen will ich seinen Namen, BWV 200, this was the first time an autograph of a previously unknown vocal work by Bach had come to light.

Context

Wilhelm Ernst was born on 19 October 1662. In 1683 he became Duke of Saxe-Weimar, jointly with his younger brother Johann Ernst. The elder brother had chosen Omnia cum Deo et nihil sine eo as his motto. In 1700, when the Gregorian calendar was adopted, Wilhelm Ernst decided that his birthday would henceforth be celebrated on 30 October. In 1703 Johann Sebastian Bach worked for some months at the ducal court in Weimar. In 1708, a year after the death of the younger duke, Bach came to work for the ducal court again, this time in the capacity of organist.
At the time, Johann Samuel Drese and his son Johann Wilhelm were the court composers at Weimar, and composition of new pieces was no part of Bach's assignment as court organist. In 1713 Bach composed the Hunting Cantata and the Canon a 4 perpetuus, BWV 1073. Also from around this time are several entries in the Orgelbüchlein, and likely the bulk of his Weimar concerto transcriptions.
Johann Anton Mylius's life is relatively well-documented: in 1751–52 one of his sons published an extended chronicle of the Mylius family, and the family was later also subject to detailed historical research. After studies in Erfurt and Leipzig in the 1680s, Johann Anton became a theologian working in Erfurt and Niederroßla, and, having become Superintendent in 1674, he was from 1697 stationed in Buttstädt, a town some north of Weimar. There, he initiated reforms of the liturgical music, and grand renovation works to the town church, including its organ. Duke Wilhelm Ernst supported Mylius in these endeavours, and even organised a fund-raiser in his realm to finance the renovation works.
Every year Duke Wilhelm Ernst would typically receive over a dozen of written congratulatory tributes. The copies of these tributes which were presented to the Duke were mostly bound in luxurious marbled paper, and conserved in the court library. One of these, published by Mumbachische Schrifften, was by the court preacher, and congratulated the duke on his 52nd birthday on 30 October 1713. Mylius and Bach convened to produce a tribute for the same occasion. The title page of that tribute, also printed by Mumbachische Schrifften, reads in part:
The title page of Mylius's ode contains the same miscalculation of the Duke's age, which, according to Michael Maul, would not be down to any of the individual authors using the services of the Mumbachische Schrifften publishing house, but was likely a more widespread misapprehension. Several composers could have been Mylius's choice for this collaboration: there were not only father and son Drese, but also the musicians with whom he collaborated in Büttstadt – whatsoever, the one with whom he embarked on the project was the 28-year old Bach. The theme of Mylius's congratulatory poem is the Duke's motto, announced thus on the tribute's title page:
Notwithstanding that the occasion, a birthday, was of a secular nature—usually Bach composed secular odes or cantatas for such occasions—, the result was a sacred work, not in the least because of the religious nature of the motto that became the topic of Mylius's exegetic poem. Bach set it as a strophic aria, a genre that had been widely practised in Germany by the end of the 17th century, but was considered old-fashioned by the second decade of the 18th century. In 1713, Duke Wilhelm Ernst's birthday was officially celebrated on Sunday 5 November, a day before he consecrated the newly finished. It is unlikely that "Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn' ihn", BWV 1127, was first performed on either of these days, a weekday service in the court chapel on Monday 30 October, the Duke's actual birthday, seeming more likely for that first performance.

Music and lyrics

The printed text of Mylius's ode takes five pages in the dedication copy, while Bach's handwritten setting, titled "Aria Soprano Solo è Ritornello", takes the last two pages of the pamphlet.

Mylius's ode

Mylius's poem is an acrostic in 12 stanzas of eight lines. The motto of Duke Wilhelm Ernst, in Latin and German, is given as the title of the poem on the page that holds its first stanza in the 1713 print. The first and last line of each stanza is the German version of the Duke's motto. In a footnote to the first line of the first stanza, Mylius gives these biblical references for the sovereign's motto :

Psalm 18:30, "For by thee I have run through a troop; and by my God have I leaped over a wall."
Psalm 60:14, "Through God we shall do valiantly: for he it is that shall tread down our enemies."
1 Chronicles 30:14, 16, "But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee.... O LORD our God, all this store that we have prepared to build thee an house for thine holy name cometh of thine hand, and is all thine own."

The second line of the first stanza reads:To which Mylius adds this footnote:The footnote indicates the scheme of the acrostic:

The emphasized letters are the initials of the Duke's name, i.e. Wilhelm Ernst Herzog Zu Sachsen-Weimar.
The third word, Wunder, starts with the same letter as Wilhelm Ernst's name. The second line of each stanza starts with Wird Ein-Her and ends on Seegen Ziehn: the word between these two half-phrases, Wunder in the case of the first stanza, reads for the 12 consecutive stanzas:
#... Wunder...
#... Jesus...
#... Landes...
#... Himmels...
#... Edlen...
#... Lebens...
#... Manchen...
#... Ewgen...
#... Reichen...
#... Neuen...
#... Seelen...
#... Tausend...

The acrostic technique was very common in such congratulatory poetry, and the Duke apparently appreciated it. The seventh line of each stanza is a variant of its second line, starting with Soll... instead of Wird.... The four middle lines of each stanza are an exegetic explanation of its second line, and Mylius indicates in footnotes which Bible passages support his theological interpretation. By stanza these biblical references for the four middle lines are,

... Wunderseegen... :
* Psalm 72:18, "Blessed be the LORD God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things."
* Genesis 15:1, "After these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward."
* Job 14:1, "Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble."
... Jesus Seegen... :
* Luke 5:3ff, "And entered into one of the ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he sat down, and taught the people out of the ship."
... Landesseegen... :
* Sirach 10:5, "In the hand of God is the prosperity of man: and upon the person of the scribe shall he lay his honour."
* Deuteronomy 33:13, "And of Joseph he said, Blessed of the LORD be his land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath"
... Himmelsseegen... :
* Hosea 2:21, "And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the LORD, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth"
* Jeremiah 5:24, "Neither say they in their heart, Let us now fear the LORD our God, that giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in his season: he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest."
* Psalm 85:11, "Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other."
... edlen Seegen... :
* Deuteronomy 33:13, "And of Joseph he said, Blessed of the LORD be his land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath"
... Lebens Seegen... :
* Psalm 133:4, "for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore."
* Kohelet 1:8, "All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing."
... manchen Seegen... :
* Psalm 139:1, "O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me."
... ewgen Seegen... :
* 2 Corinthians 4:17, "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory"
* Romans 8:18, "For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."
... reichen Seegen... :
* Ephesians 3:20, "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us"
... neuen Seegen... :
* Lamentations 3:23, " are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness."
* Isaiah 40:31, "But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."
* Song of Songs 3:4, "It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me."
... Seelenseegen... :
* Wisdom 3:3, "And their going from us to be utter destruction: but they are in peace."
* Matthew 10:28, "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."
* John 11:26, "And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?"
* Matthew 16:26, "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
... tausend Seegen... :
* Daniel 7:10, "A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened."
* Revelation 7:9, "After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands"
* Psalm 143:11, "Quicken me, O LORD, for thy name's sake: for thy righteousness' sake bring my soul out of trouble."