Weimar cantata (Bach)


Johann Sebastian Bach worked at the ducal court in Weimar from 1708 to 1717. The composition of cantatas for the Schlosskirche on a regular monthly basis started with his promotion to Konzertmeister in March 1714.

Church cantatas

From 1714 to 1717 Bach was commissioned to compose one church cantata a month. His goal was to compose a complete set of cantatas for the liturgical year within four years. In the course of almost four years there he thus covered most occasions of the liturgical year.
The first version of Liebster Gott, vergisst du mich, BWV 1136, a lost cantata the libretto of which was written by Georg Christian Lehms and published in 1711 for the seventh Sunday after Trinity, may have been composed in Weimar.

Before 1714

Apart from some Weimar cycle cantatas which may have been composed before they were adopted into that cycle :

Weimar cycle

The expression "Weimar cycle" has been used for the cantatas composed in Weimar from 1714.
Cantatas 54 and 199 were performed within the cycle but possibly composed earlier. BWV 18 and 21 may also have been composed before 1714.

Other sacred music and cantatas of Bach's Weimar period

In the Bach-Jahrbuch of 2015, Peter Wollny wrote that Bach likely encountered several of the old-school contrapuntal sacred compositions, which were going to play a seminal role in the composer's output of the 1740s, for the first time in Weimar. Among these compositions are,

Passions

Passions performed in the Weimar period, however not considered to be passion cantatas, thus not generally listed in the Weimar cycle:

Strophic aria, BWV 1127

In 1713 Bach composed a sacred aria, "Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn' ihn", for a secular occasion, the birthday of William Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Weimar.

Secular cantatas

Bach composed the first version of his secular cantata Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd, BWV 208 for performance on.