Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe, BWV 22 Weimar did not dismiss him and arrested him for disobedience. He was released on 2 December 1717. In Köthen, Bach found an employer who was an enthusiastic musician himself. The court was Calvinist, therefore Bach's work from this period was mostly secular, including the orchestral suites, the cello suites, the sonatas and partitas for solo violin, and the "Brandenburg Concertos". He composed secular cantatas for the court for occasions such as New Year's Day and the prince's birthday, including . He later parodied some of them as church cantatas without major changes, for example . Bach composed his cantata as
Keyboard concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach timing matched the publication of the first ever collection of keyboard concertos, the widely acclaimed and well-selling Organ concertos, Op.4 of George Frederic Handel published in London and Paris in 1738. The harpsichord concertos were composed in a manner completely idiomatic to the keyboard (this was equally true for those written for two or more harpsichords). They were almost certainly originally conceived for a small chamber group, with one instrument per desk, even if performed on one of the newly developed fortepianos, which only gradually acquired the potential for producing a louder dynamic. The keyboard writing also conforms to a