A chorale prelude or chorale setting is a short liturgical composition for organ, using a chorale tune as its basis. Chorale preludes are typically polyphonic settings, with their chorale tune, plainly audible and often ornamented. Accompanying motifs are usually derived from contrapuntal workings of this chorale melody.

I have left the dynamics in this arrangment open for interpretation. The challenge will be to find areas where the dynamics can be scaled back, amidst the almost unrelenting darkness of the harmonies and the chromaticism. The tempo, bowings and fingerings are suggestions, also subject to the choices of those performing.

-Charles Jacot

Click below to watch a performance of this work by Andrea Marcon on organ:

“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. 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....

[At the end of BWV 741, one hears] ... music of great intensity, aptly reflecting Luther’s text in which he begs God for pity on poor godless humanity and summarizes their plight in the words “abandoned are we wretches”. It has been suggested that this work, in its disregard for many of the rules of dissonance, might reflect the difficult life circumstances of an orphaned young man.... it is undoubtedly the most harshly dissonant of all Bach’s early works, and perhaps most nearly approaches the borders of the possible in technique and expression.”

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

Below is a translation of the first stanza of Ach Gott vom Himmel sieh' darein:
Ah God, look down from heaven
and still have mercy on us,
how few are the saints that belong to you,
we poor wretches are forsaken.
People simply will not accept your word as truth,
faith is also fading away
among all mankind.