Three years ago I read in David Yearsley’s book about Anna Magdalena Bach that this 16th Sunday after Trinity was seen as “Widows Sunday” in Bach’s time. He bases this not only on the Bible reading for this Sunday, The raising of the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7: 11-17), but especially on the texts of sermons from that time. Since chorale singing was an important comfort to widows, Yearsly thus concludes that is must be for this reason that chorales play such an important role in Bach’s cantatas for this Sunday.

I found this a compelling way of looking at especially Cantata 95 Christus der ist mein Leben and Cantata 161 Komm, du süsse Todesstunde. I wrote a blog post about it in 2020, which is still my most-read post ever. If you haven’t read it, please check it out here.

In another post, from 2017, I go into movie script mode again and imagine how parts of the moving Cantata 8 Liebster Gott, wenn wird ich sterben might have been inspired by Telemann. Read that one here.

Wieneke Gorter, September 24, 2023.