The title of this hymn, Ich hab' mein' Sach' Gott heimgestellt, can be translated as "All that concerns me I have left up to God". This intense chorale should work well for cello quartet, and the four parts are fairly equally distributed. One interesting little passage in the third cello part, at bar 63, has a theme later heard in the Well-Tempered Clavier. Dynamics and slurs have been added in this arrangement, as suggestions, but interpretors should feel free to make their own artistic choices.

-Charles Jacot

“There is a deep-seated affinity between Ich hab mein Sach Gott heimgestellt (BWV 707) and Ach Gott vom Himmel sieh darein (BWV 741).... In both cases, the canonic technique becomes strict, being set in a fugal context and assimilated to stretto (overlapping statements). Not only do the preparatory fugal expositions often involve stretto, but the cantus firmus statements that follow are mostly in close canon (by augmentation in BWV 707). The strictness of the stretto/canon in both cases results in ‘difficult’ intervals ... whose satisfactory resolution demands exceptional harmonic ingenuity.  Moreover, the association of the text with death (BWV 707) or abandonment by God (BWV 741) leads to the use of rising of falling chromatic lines or continuously syncopated lines as counterpoints to the chorale. Recurring intervals or chords, used for expressive purposes, recur almost obsessively.... which create an appropriate sense of desolation. In both cases, two chorale lines are counterpointed against each other....”

-The Creative Development of Johann Sebastian Bach,  Vol. 1: 1695-1717, by Richard D. P. Jones.

Click below to listen to a performance of this work by Wolfgang Rübsam.