Bach's earliest cantatas date from more than 15 years before he became Thomaskantor in Leipzig in 1723. His earliest extant cantatas were composed in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen. In 1708 he moved to Weimar where he wrote most of his church cantatas before the Leipzig era. These pre-Leipzig cantatas are not generally grouped as one of the five cycles mentioned in the "Nekrolog". The extant cantatas of the pre-Leipzig era are primarily known by their recasting as a cantata in one of the Leipzig cycles.