the text of the first verse of Luther's hymn with the English translation by Charles Sanford Terry: Vater unser im Himmelreich, der du uns alle heissest gleich Brüder sein und dich rufen an und willst das Beten vor uns ha'n, gib, dass nicht bet allein der Mund, hilf, dass es geh' aus Herzensgrund. Our Father in the heaven Who art, Who tellest all of us in heart Brothers to be, and on Thee call, And wilt have prayer from us all, Grant that the mouth not only pray, From deepest heart oh help its way. Vater unser im Himmelreich BWV 682 in E minor has long been considered the most complex of Bach's chorale preludes, difficult at the levels of both understanding and performance. Through a ritornello trio sonata in the modern French galante style, the German chorale of the first verse is heard in canon at the octave, almost subliminally, played in each hand together with the obligato instrumental solo. Bach had already mastered such a compound form in the choral fantasia opening his cantata Jesu, der du meine Seele, BWV 78. The canon could be a reference to the Law, the adherence to which Luther saw as one of the purposes of prayer. The galante style in the upper parts is reflected in their lombardic rhythms and detached semiquaver triplets, sometimes played against semiquavers, typical of French flute music of the time. Below, the pedal plays a restless continuo, with constantly changing motifs. On the technical side, the suggestion of the German musicologist Hermann Keller that BWV 682 required four manuals and two players has not been accepted. As Bach emphasised to his students, however, articulation was all-important: dotted figures and triplets had to be distinguished and should only come together when the "music is extremely fast." The theme in the upper parts is an elaborate coloratura version of the hymn, like the instrumental solos in the slow movements of trio sonatas or concertos. Its wandering, sighing nature has been taken to represent the unsaved soul in search of God's protection. It has three key elements which are developed extensively in the prelude: the lombardic rhythms in bar 3; the chromatic descending phrase between bars 5 and 6; and the detached semiquaver triplets in bar 10. Bach already used lombardic rhythms in the early 1730s, in particular in some early versions of the Domine Deus of the Mass