J.S. Bach Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring Cantata 147 on Romantic Guitar Solo

Arrangement By Jan-Olof Eriksson

Composed originally in 1716 in Weimar, Cantata 147 was revised by Bach during his Leipzig years, and premiered in an expanded version in 1723 for the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is the feast which commemorates the visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth, who would become the mother of John the Baptist. Like so many of Bach’s texts, this is an original poetic text; the Weimar poet Salomo Franck provided the entire text for Bach’s first setting, to which two chorale verses and recitatives were added in Leipzig by an unknown author. These recitatives paraphrase Mary’s Magnificat, which links this cantata quite directly to the Feast of the Visitation, something not obvious in the Weimar original. In Weimar, the earlier version of the cantata was intended for the fourth Sunday of Advent. It was traditional, however, in Weimar to perform cantatas only on the first Sunday of Advent, so we have no real knowledge of the performance history of that work. Though the Feast of the Visitation of Mary occurs in July, in modern times we associate this feast with Advent as immediately anticipating the birth of the Christ Child.

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