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By the end of May, 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach had finally been appointed cantor of the four churches in the historic centre of Leipzig. That moment marked the beginning of the last stage of Bach’s life, undoubtedly one of the most intense from a creative point of view. Over the following six years Bach was to take on the huge task of writing at least four complete cycles of cantatas for the entire liturgical year. In practical terms, this meant composing about sixty cantatas per year corresponding to all the Sundays and holy days of obligation. An impressive feat which, moreover, he had to combine with his responsibility for liturgical services as director of the choir of St. Thomas’s Church. To mark the Christmas celebrations of the winter of 1734-1735, Bach decided to compose a cycle of cantatas to fulfil the liturgical requirements for that period, which basically involved covering the usual seven days of festivities: in other words, December 25, Christmas Day; December 26, St. Stephen’s Day; December 27, St. John’s Day; the Sunday before New Year; January1; the Sunday before Epiphany and, finally, January 6, Epiphany. It so happened that in 1734, December 26 fell on a Sunday, and in consequence Bach only had to compose six cantatas to cover all the Christmas services that year. Over the Christmas period, the cantatas in question were alternately performed at the two most important churches in Leipzig’s historic centre: St Thomas’s and St Nicholas’s. Sometimes they were even performed at one church in the morning and at the other in the evening. Both the narrative march of the Gospel and the tonality in which the musical framework was composed, give the cantatas a character of an autonomous cycle that Jordi Savall and his groups face for the first time.