There are two extant chorale preludes by Buxtehude setting the chorale, Von Gott will ich nicht lassen, the devotional text of which speaks of God's love for his children. The first verse reads. "From God I will not part, because he won't leave me. He leads me down all roads where I otherwise would have gone lost. He reaches out his hand to me, both morning and evening he takes care of me, wherever I may be." Of the two settings on the chorale, BuxWV 220 is the most like the rest of his other chorale prelude output. The chorale melody is embellished and lies in the soprano range with three other accompanying voices. Buxtehude also uses some musical rhetoric in his embellishment of the chorale melody reflecting images from the chorale text. In one instance, when the text speaks of getting lost, Buxtehude writes an ornament that rises too high from the melody pitch losing touch with the backbone melody. The line then falls back into place after a disjunct downward leap of a seventh back into the melody range.

The other setting, BuxWV 221 is much less like anything else Buxtehude wrote. Most of Buxtehude's chorale preludes feature some sort of solo voice with accompaniment, even if the melody is not in the soprano, but this prelude features four mostly equal voices in a polyphonic texture. The setting is only loosely tied to the chorale, and while the chorale melody migrates from voice to voice, there are moments when the tune is not really present but just sort of hinted at. Buxtehude's chorale fantasy-type chorale settings do involve a migrating cantus firmus and can appear a little bit lenient in their treatment of the chorale melody; however, this piece doesn't really look much like the typical Buxtehude chorale fantasy either. One of the most prominent features of the chorale fantasy is that they go on and on, and this chorale prelude is only 30 measures long.

© Andrus Madsen, All Music Guide