Johann Sebastian Bach worked at the ducal court in Weimar from 1708 to 1717. The composition of cantatas for the Schlosskirche (court chapel) on a regular monthly basis started with his promotion to Konzertmeister in March 1714.[1]
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.[2]
The expression "Weimar cycle" has been used for the cantatas composed in Weimar from 1714 (which form the bulk of extant cantatas composed before Bach's Leipzig time).[7][8]
Cantatas 54 and 199 were performed within the cycle but possibly composed earlier. BWV 18 and 21[9] may also have been composed before 1714.
11th Sunday after Trinity: Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut, BWV 199 (12 August 1714: Weimar version in C minor; restaged in Köthen in a version in D minor)
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.[16] Among these compositions are,