Bach 300

In the 18th century, cantatas were arranged into year-cycles comprising the music for all Sundays and feast days in a church year. Bach also organized his cantatas into year-cycles; we know this, for example, from the Nekrolog (obituary) with its mention of the “five cycles”, which are still a source of scholarly debate today. This organizing principle was also applied to the apportioning of Bach’s estate: the beneficiaries received his manuscripts as complete cycles (here it should be noted that Bach’s Leipzig year-cycles do not begin on the 1st Advent, but on the 1 st Sunday after Trinity).

Bach’s second cycle of cantatas, the year of the chorale cantatas, is rather special. Albeit incomplete, it is Bach’s only (surviving) truly consistent cycle, also regarding the texts. These cantatas are unique both for their adherence to the core repertoire of Protestant hymns as well as in the mixture of chorale texts (outer movements) and madrigal-like settings of the standard recitative-aria form. Unfortunately, the series of 42 cantatas ends on Quinquagesima 1725, i.e. before Passiontide. We can only speculate as to the reason for this premature conclusion.
Bach initially continues with cantata texts from diverse sources, before finally ending the year-cycle with a series of texts by the Leipzig poet Christiane Marianne von Ziegler. In view of the large number of new compositions – Bach had no older chorale cantatas to borrow from – the period from mid-1724 to mid-1725 can be considered one of the most productive in the composer’s life!