This sixth and concluding book in the Bach Cantatas series is concerned with the thirty-nine sacred cantatas for Easter to Pentecost. They are grouped into the period for Easter proper (including the Easter Oratorio), the five Sundays after Easter, Ascension (including the Ascension Oratorio), Exaudi, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday.
Easter proper begins after the Passion, with Christ dead in the tomb, through to His resurrection and the events that proceed from it. Ascension concerns Christ’s departure from the world. Exaudi centres on the promise of the arrival of the Holy Ghost to the church of Christ, and Pentecost is its realization. Trinity Sunday is then the feast of the Trinitarian actuality, which completes the liturgical, and Bach’s, cycles.
