Tue Rechnung! Donnerwort in B minor, BWV 168

Bach set a text by Salomo Franck a librettist with whom he had worked in Weimar. The text, which Franck had published in 1715, uses the prescribed reading from the Gospel of Luke, the parable of the Unjust Steward, as a starting point for thoughts about the debt of sin and its "payment", using monetary terms. He concluded the text with a stanza from Bartholomäus Ringwaldt's hymn "Herr Jesu Christ, du höchstes Gut". Bach structured the cantata in six movements and scored it intimately, as he did for many of Franck's works, for four vocal parts, combined only in the chorale, two oboes d'amore, strings and basso continuo. It is the first new composition in his third year as Thomaskantor in Leipzig.