Scored for voice, clarinet, viola, and cello, the cantata was completed on 12 April 1931 in Lwów and published by Universal Edition a year later. Setting the text of the First Epistle of St Paul to Corinthians (Chapter 13), the cantata is considered as one of Koffler’s most important and valuable compositions. Its original German-language version was based on Martin Luther’s translation.

He applies a sophisticated twelve-note technique discussed in detail by Jerzy Freiheiter (‘Reports on Contemporary Polish Musical Literature’, Muzyka Polska 8 (1935)). Of special interest is his way of distributing the series-theme between the various parts using suitable transpositions and so-called ‘mirror-image forms’. At the same time, Freiheiter emphasises the key musical qualities:

[…] apart from the unrelenting consistency with which the composer applies his perfect knowledge of technique to carry through his prime row […], one admires in Koffler the deep-felt moods that paint the mystical context of the work (for instance in the introduction and the theme of the variations), which sometimes (though the artist might likely protest!) even lead to ‘romantic’ moments (as in the cantilena of the clarinet on the words ‘And love cannot perish’) as well as robust and rhythmically vivid ones (as in the 1^st variation of the 1^st movement and the fughetta subject). Along with his unfailing sense of sound colour and the coloristic possibilities of his small set of voice and instruments, all these are not an end in themselves, but mainly serve to bring out the contour and, above this level, also the idea of the work.