In allen meinen Taten in B-flat major, BWV 97

Bach wrote the chorale cantata in 1734, about a decade after his annual cycle of cantatas, in the same year as his Christmas Oratorio, one year after Kyrie and Gloria of his later Mass in B minor. He dated the manuscript himself, but the occasion is unspecified. The work may have originally been composed for a wedding, because the score shows on top of movement 7 the crossed-out words "nach der Trauung" (after the wedding). A later copy mentions the fifth Sunday after Trinity. The text consists of nine unchanged stanzas of the chorale by Paul Fleming, published in 1642. The six lines of each stanza rhyme in pairs: 1 and 2, 4 and 5, 3 and 6. The text was written in 1633 at the outset of a "long and hazardous journey" to Moscow and reflects a "beginning in God's name". Bach structured nine stanzas in as many movements, framing a sequence of arias and recitatives by an opening chorus and a closing chorale. At least two later performances between 1735 and 1747 are documented.