Bach has always been thought of as an essentially practical composer, who wrote music because it was needed. Certainly this is true of the cantatas, produced usually for the principal Sunday service of the Lutheran church and scored for the available combinations of voices and instruments.

Although about two-fifths of Bach’s sacred cantatas are lost, some two hundred survive, of which the majority were composed in four cycles. The earliest handful of cantatas date from Bach’s Mühlhausen period (1707–8), but following his move to Weimar he seems to have concentrated on composing organ music. However, in 1714 he began his first cantata series, with the aim of producing a complete cycle over four years. Circumstances deteriorated in 1717 between Bach and his employer, Duke Wilhelm, and the Duke even briefly imprisoned his Kapellmeister before dismissing him in disgrace in December. At Cöthen, only secular cantatas were composed, and so it was not until his move to Leipzig in 1723 that Bach once again took up the composition of church cantatas.