Bach composed in 1725 for the 43rd birthday of his patron,
Christian, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels, after having written
Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd, BWV 208, for his 31st birthday. It was first performed at
Schloss Neu-Augustusburg on 23 February 1725. In 1725 Bach was working as the
Thomaskantor in Leipzig. The text was written by
Picander, a
librettist he met there; it is their first documented collaboration. The work, as the earlier
cantata, is festively scored, the characters are mythological figures, and the libretto is influenced by the contemporary shepherds' poetry which was popular at courts. Picander published the piece in 1727 as , suggesting that it was to be performed as theatre in shepherd costumes during a meal. While the text survived, the music is lost. It can be reconstructed, because Bach used it again, in a cantata for Easter Sunday first performed the same year, and performed again several times, always polishing details. The version performed in 1738 was named
Easter Oratorio. It seems likely that Bach had planned to use the music for both purposes from the start. The German Bach scholar
Friedrich Smend determined that the order of movements was not changed in the derived work, and that therefore the music of the Shepherd Cantata could be reconstructed. Addition of the missing recitatives has been tried by musicologist
Hermann Keller and by
Alexander Grychtolik. It is not known if the two instrumental movements opening the oratorio were already part of the cantata. == Plot, scoring and structure ==