About this Piece

This piece is a transcription of the opening sinfonia to Bach’s church cantata Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grabe (I stand with one foot in the grave), which was first performed in Leipzig in either 1727 or 1729. It is one of those miraculously spun slow movements Bach could seemingly produce whenever needed, a floating reverie that has been arranged for everything from solo guitar to the Swingle Singers. (Woody Allen used it in the soundtrack for his 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters.)

As elegantly and eloquently lyrical as it is, the piece has a complicated history. The cantata’s sinfonia is scored for oboe, strings, and continuo and was apparently lifted from an earlier—and now lost—oboe concerto. Bach reworked it later as the middle movement of his Harpsichord Concerto in F minor (BWV 1056), where it was surrounded by two movements adapted from a violin concerto, also lost. —John Henken