Erdmann Neumeister (1671-1756) was chief pastor of St. James's Church in Hamburg for forty years and a fierce opponent of Pietism, which in his view rested faith on the feelings of the heart instead of God's work in Word and Sacrament. In 1736, when an anonymous play mocking Pietist teaching appeared in Leipzig, enraged Pietists assumed he had written it and smashed the windows of his house. Yet some orthodox Lutherans distrusted him too, for allowing operatic music in church. Neumeister adapted madrigal verse to create the modern cantata libretto, and Bach and Telemann set his texts. He often closed his sermons with a hymn of his own on the day's Gospel. This one, "Ich weiss, an wen ich glaube" (2 Timothy 1:12), was written for Quasimodogeniti, the Sunday of Thomas's doubt (John 20:19-31), and published in 1718 in his Evangelischer Nachklang. Oddly, that book holds two hymns with the same first line, meter and length; the other is for Saints Peter and Paul. The hymn confesses that faith stands on Christ's sure Word where human reason cannot reach. Neumeister himself chose the tune, NUN LOB, MEIN SEEL, probably by Johann Kugelmann (1540). The English is a composite from The Lutheran Hymnal (1941).
Sung at Our Saviour
2025
2026