• Birthday of Princess Charlotte Friederike of Cöthen, 1726

The cantatas in the family associated with cantata BWV 36 had a complicated genesis which I won't attempt to fully unravel here other than to say that much of the music is derived from the earliest, secular, cantata BWV 36c. Alas, although these two works, together with BWV 36b survive pretty much in full, this one doesn't: the music is lost to us. The text remains and from that we can deduce that movements 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 (the arias) correspond to their models in BWV 36c so that all that is irrecoverable is the music accompanying the recitatives.

Copyright © 1999, Simon Crouch.