After his resettlement from Paris to Dresden in 1842, where Wagner took over a position as director of the royal Saxon court chapel and agreed to also take over the direction of the Dresden Liedertafel, he was commissioned to compose a cantata for the following festival of singers , The resulting work is a cantata of around thirty minutes, which is considered Wagner's only spiritual choral work. It tells part of the Acts of the Apostles. The special thing about this composition is that the orchestra only starts after about 25 minutes. Wagner later tried again in Parsifal to achieve the mysterious effect of the choirs, which were distributed several times in the height of the church on various galleries up to the dome and partially invisible. The original late orchestral part is the starting point for our transcription. (Edition Symphonic Works)