Bach held the position of "Thomaskantor" (director of church music) in Leipzig from 1723. During his first year, beginning with the first Sunday after Trinity, he had written a first cycle of cantatas for the occasions of the liturgical year. In his second year he composed a second annual cycle of cantatas, which was planned to consist exclusively of chorale cantatas, each based on one Lutheran chorale. As Easter was early in 1725, there was no Fourth Sunday after Epiphany that year. In 1735, shortly after the first performance of his "Christmas Oratorio", Bach seems to have desired to fill this void and complete his cycle of chorale cantatas. Bach scholar Christoph Wolff found it evident that Bach reprised the second cycle in 1735, performing the new cantata between , for the third Sunday after Epiphany and , for Septuagesima.