Cantata no. 49: Ich geh und suche mit Verlangen, BWV.49

Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata Ich geh und suche mit Verlangen (I go forth and seek with longing), BWV 49, in Leipzig for the twentieth Sunday after Trinity Sunday and first performed it on 3 November 1726. It is a solo cantata, a dialogue of soprano and bass.

Bach composed the cantata in his fourth year as Thomaskantor (director of church music) in Leipzig. The librettist, Christoph Birkmann, based his text on the prescribed Gospel, the parable of the great banquet, which he connected to imagery from the love poetry of the Song of Songs: Jesus, sung by the bass as the vox Christi, is in dialogue with the Soul, invited as his bride to the wedding. The cantata is structured in six movements, beginning with an instrumental sinfonia. The soloists perform alternating arias and dialogue recitatives. In the last movement, a stanza from Nicolai's "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern" is integrated into the dialogue. The Baroque instrumental ensemble is formed by oboe d'amore, violoncello piccolo, strings, organ and basso continuo. The Bach scholar Klaus Hofmann summarises: "Bach has clothed his music in the 'wedding garments' of exquisite scoring".