Now, despite a certain amount of musical training, I am not a musician or a musicologist, and I am certain to slip into the bad linguistic habit of using absolute comparatives and superlatives when what I am actually describing is my emotional reaction to a work. I have included, where appropriate, the bible readings for the day on which the each cantata was performed and I do encourage the listener to read them as well as the text of the cantata. Lutheran theology is not so alien to our modern minds as to remove all hope of understanding the affekt that Bach was trying to create with his music. I would like to say a few words of introduction and apology for the approach that I have taken here to the sacred cantatas: They are sacred works, mostly written with a specific function in a Lutheran church service and I believe that they should be listened to with that context in mind, whether you are a believer or not. I hope that these writings will persuade some of you to visit or perhaps to re-visit some of these superb works and I will be overjoyed if, through my advocacy, just some of you gain entry to this wonderful world. As you can see, thanks to the kindness of Dave Lampson, I've been able to collect together those postings and some additional material to make these pages at the Classical Net. During 1995-2000 I posted a series of reviews on the newsgroup that recorded my reactions, as a musical listener, to the Bach cantatas. I hope that this present endeavour will help circumvent the second problem.

In many cases there is now a choice of renditions available (in both ancient and modern performance practice!), many of extremely high quality. Fortunately, the availability of recordings of almost all of them help circumvent the first problem. Nearly two hundred sacred cantatas and over a score of secular cantatas leave the neophyte in a state of confusion as to where to start. A second reason is surely their sheer extent. One reason may be that their original function and context, either as sacred or secular celebration, does not fit well with modern concert practice and so exposure to all but a handful of them is rare. Bach form an exceptional body of work that, for various reasons, seem not to be as well known by the listening public as the venerated status of their composer suggests they should be.

The Bach Reader by Hans T. David