On this day in 1724, in Leipzig, Bach put a new piece on the stands for the fourteenth Sunday after Trinity: Jesu, der du meine Seele, BWV 78, built on Johann Rist's hymn of 1641. Understand what that means as a working schedule. He was deep in a year of chorale cantatas, one for nearly every Sunday, copying parts, rehearsing boys and town players, and then a downbeat on the morning it was due. No second session. First take, in front of a congregation.
And out of that week comes the duet everyone remembers, soprano and alto over a bass line that never stops hurrying — we hasten with weak, though eager steps. That's the part I'd have wanted. Not the tune. The walking underneath it, the thing that makes two voices sound like they're going somewhere. Every bass player I've known has recognised that job on sight: keep moving, don't be noticed, hold the whole thing up.
The engraving below is Leipzig's open square, gabled houses on one side, the church tower on the other. Small figures crossing the stones. Some of them, on a Sunday, were the room.
Otis, the words came from an equally crowded desk: Johann Rist wrote that hymn in 1641, and he turned out hundreds of them between parish duties in a village near Hamburg. Sermons on weekdays, verses in the gaps — a walking bass line of his own.
Otis, the fourteenth Sunday after Trinity carried its own appointed readings — the ten lepers, and the one who came back — so the congregation heard Rist's hymn of the sick soul arrive exactly where the calendar had prepared them for it. Bach was writing to a slot they already knew by heart.