Bach composed the cantata in his second year as Thomaskantor in Leipzig for the 16th Sunday after Trinity. It is based on the hymn of the same name by Caspar Neumann, part of Bach's second cantata cycle, planned as a cycle of chorale cantatas. Daniel Vetter, organist at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig, composed the hymn tune for Neumann's hymn, Zahn No. 6634, before 1695. Vetter's four-part setting of the hymn was commissioned for the funeral of the cantor Jakob Wilisius: it was published in 1713 as Part II of his book of chorales Kirch- und Haus-Ergötzlichkeit. The prescribed readings for the Sunday were from the Epistle to the Ephesians, praying for the strengthening of faith in the congregation of Ephesus, and from the Gospel of Luke, the raising from the dead of the young man from Nain. Bach first performed the cantata on 24 September 1724.
The opening chorus is a gapped chorale setting of the tune. The alto, tenor, and bass voices sing free counterpoint, while the sopranos sing the chorale unadorned in long notes. Philipp Spitta described the sound of this movement as a "church-yard full of flowers in the springtime". As Alfred Dürr comments, the chorus, with instrumental ensemble of high obbligato flute, two oboes d'amore and plucked arpeggios, presents "a sublime vision of the hour of death". The tenor aria is characterized by continued tones of the death knell and string pizzicato in the accompaniment, and an eloquent duet between the vocal line and the oboe d'amore. The following alto recitative "brings forth a bit of the terror of death", in contrast with the joyous bass aria in "jig tempo" that follows. After a clipped soprano recitative, the chorus and orchestra unite in the final chorale, ending the cantata. Christoph Wolff notes that "the texturally transparent and rhythmically vibrant setting" of the closing chorale is informed by the treatment of the opening chorus. More generally Emil Platen and Wolff have observed that when Bach adapted or borrowed chorales from more recent composers such as Vopelius or Vetter, he composed in a more fashionable and melodic style. In 1998 the authenticity of the closing chorale of BWV 8 was placed in doubt, when it was labelled as "spurious" in the second edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis. In 2003, however, Michael Maul and Peter Wollny resolved some uncertainty by establishing that the main unidentified copyist for BWV 8—linked to C.F. Doles —was Carl Friedrich Barth, born in 1734, the son of a merchant from Glauchau. Barth became a chorister at the Thomasschule in 1746, where he was picked out by Bach for his skills in Latin to become music prefect. After leading performances at the Thomaskirche and Nikolaikirche, he enrolled at the University of Leipzig in 1757 to study philosophy and theology. In 1770 he was appointed as a Cantor in Borna, where he died in 1813. None of these searches of the early 21st century about who copied the cantata in the middle of the 18th century have however any relation whatsoever with the reason why its closing chorale, BWV 8/6, is listed as a spurious work in the third Anhang of the 1998 edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis: the chorale is qualified as a spurious Bach-composition while its four-part setting was composed by Daniel Vetter, published in 1713, after which it was copied, with some revisions, by Bach, in his 1724 cantata, a decade before Barth arrived in Leipzig.
Other version
An alternative version of the cantata in D major is also extant, likely first performed in September 1747. Several minor changes to the instrumentation were also implemented; for example, in the first movement the two oboe parts are given to concertante violins, and in the bass aria, the oboe d'amore is used colla parte with the flute. Both variants have been recorded: the aria by Ton Koopman with Klaus Mertens as the bass soloist and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, and the chorus by Koopman's pupil Masaaki Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan in addition to the full cantata in E major.
