Composed in Leipzig, BWV 137 ("Praise the Lord, the almighty king") is a cantata for the twelfth Sunday after Trinity, August 19, 1725. Although standing outside the second annual cycle Bach composed for Leipzig during the liturgical year of 1724-1725, it conforms stylistically to many of the so-called "chorale cantatas" that dominate that period. The Bach scholar Christoph Wolff suggests that BWV 137 was explicitly designed to fill one of the gaps in the second cycle. It has no particular liturgical connections with the twelfth Sunday after Trinity, and Bach may also have had the Leipzig Town Council election service (which occurred around this time) in mind. Certainly the festive character of the work, with its scoring for three trumpets and timpani, would have made it suitable for performance on a ceremonial occasion. The work, in fact, is a rarity among Bach's cantatas in that it makes no use of either biblically derived recitative or poetic aria texts, being based solely on the five stanzas of the hymn (chorale) from which it takes its name. The text, written by Joachim Neander in 1680, has an associated melody known in the English-speaking world as "Praise to the Lord, the almighty, the king of creation." Bach uses this melody in all five movements of the cantata. The opening movement is typical of the fantasia type employed in the chorale cantatas; following a lively orchestral introduction (with trumpets, tympani, two oboes, and strings) the lower voices (alto, tenor, and bass) enter to a theme based on this sinfonia while the melody of Neander's hymn is sung by the sopranos in short notes, rather than the customary long ones. The second stanza of the hymn is set as a trio; the tune is embellished by the alto soloist and supported by solo violin and continuo. This movement was later transcribed by Bach to form the sixth of the well-known Schübler Chorales for organ. In the third stanza, the hymn is heard in an imitative dialogue for the soprano and bass soloists, accompanied by the two oboes. Trio texture returns for the fourth verse, where the tune is given principally to a solo trumpet, leaving the tenor soloist the freedom for ornamental flourishes. The brilliant final chorus is a four-part setting of the hymn tune embellished by trumpets and tympani. It was later reused in the wedding cantata "Herr Gott, Beherrscher aller Dinge," BWV 120a (1729). The original parts of BWV 137 were preserved in the library of the Thomasschule in Leipzig until its demolition in 1902. They are now housed in the Staatsbibliotek, Berlin.

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