(In all my undertakings) for soprano, alto, tenor and bass, vocal ensemble, oboe I+II, bassoon, strings and continuo

The cantata “In allen meinen Taten” (In all my undertakings) is set to a hymn by the brilliant baroque poet Paul Fleming (1609–1640), whose all-too-short life led him from Hartenstein in the Ore Mountains to Leipzig, Russia and Persia, then on to Hamburg and the Duchy of Holstein. With an autograph date of 1734, the cantata belongs to a group of four festive sacred works with no specific connection to the church year and that are based entirely on the chorale verse “Per omnes versus”. Accordingly, the individual movements are not described as recitatives or arias, but as “Versus 1” to “Versus ultimus”; the cantata’s internal structure, however, is determined considerably by the strophic form of each verse as two three-line “Stollen”. In recent years, Bach scholar Marc-Roderich Pfau has posited that this group of works may have been written for the Court of Weissenfels. Indeed, Bach had been appointed titular Kapellmeister of the court in 1729, although it is not known whether he provided any musical services. Notes in the source text moreover suggest that the work was later reused as wedding music.