Waiting for salvation can take a long time. But halfway, a ray of hope glimmers.

It is already clear from the opening line that this is not just about slight misfortune, but deep misery. At the word ‘depth’, the voices literally plummet. The piece comes from the very beginning of Bach’s career, during his time as organist in Mühlhausen. He was then in his early twenties and trying his hand at vocal church music for the first time. He did so properly, according to the book, and in stylistic line with his seventeenth-century fellow musicians. There are no recitatives as yet and the movements run into one another more or less without interruption. They begin with a slow section, and then usually end quickly – like a sort of prelude and fugue. Like most early cantatas, this one too is symmetrical, with the chorus ‘Ich harre des Herrn’ as the central point. This is also where the mood changes. The beginning focuses mainly on the misery, whereas the third movement holds out a ray of hope. In the tenor’s aria, Bach goes on to illustrate quite literally that waiting can take a long time – listen out for the word ‘wartet’. The piece feels long even for the singer, as Charles Daniels explains in the interview.

We do not know for which occasion the piece was intended. In view of the text – a penitential psalm combined with a penitential chorale – it would have fitted very well in a ‘penitential service’. It is not known whether this sort of service was held regularly in Mühlhausen or only on special occasions. Just before Bach arrived in Mühlhausen, there had been a big fire, so there was cause for such a service.

It is interesting that Bach himself wrote at the bottom of the score that the cantata was composed at the request of Georg Christian Eilmar. He was the preacher in St Mary’s Church in Mühlhausen, although Bach himself worked at St Blaise’s Church. Eilmar was to become a good friend and later became godfather to Bach’s eldest daughter.