(King of heaven, thou art welcome) for alto, tenor and bass, vocal ensemble, recorder, strings and continuo.

The cantata “Himmelskönig, sei willkommen” (King of heaven, thou art welcome) BWV 182, written for Palm Sunday in 1714, was Bach’s first composition following his appointment as Konzertmeister at the ducal court of Weimar. Based on a specification in some of the performance parts, renowned Bach scholar Alfred Dürr assumes that Bach initially planned to end the cantata directly after verse six with a recapitulation of the opening chorus. This would have given it the style of a concertoaria cantata – an antiquated form that Bach had largely discontinued using. When Bach became Thomascantor in Leipzig, he could not reuse the cantata in its original form as – unlike in Weimar – Palm Sunday belonged to the church year’s “tempus clausum” (closed time) during which the performance of concerted music with instruments was suspended. It is thus likely that Bach rededicated the work in 1726 for the Feast of the Annunciation and adapted it to present Christ’s entry into Jerusalem as a metaphor for his entrance into the world.