The Weimar Cantatas are twenty-two in number, of which all but three were written subsequently to Bach’s appointment as Concertmeister early in 1714. He had been organist to the Ducal Court of Weimar since June 1708, a position which did not require him to compose for the Ducal Chapel. On the other hand, three Cantatas are attributed to the early Weimar years. But they cannot be positively dated, and their libretti bear such clear traces of Eilmar’s influence that their composition may belong rather to the Mühlhausen period. Their texts display Eilmar’s preference for strictly Biblical material and a disinclination to employ secular forms. The first of them(368) is a paraphrase of the Magnificat. The second(369) consists of four verses of Psalm 25, along with three simple rhymed stanzas which we have no difficulty in attributing to Bach himself. The third, _Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit_ (No. 106), was composed, Spitta conjectures,(370) for the funeral of Philipp Grossgebauer, Rector of Weimar School, in 1711. But more recently, and more probably, Pirro(371) has expressed the opinion that Bach wrote it for the funeral of his uncle, Tobias Lammerhirt, who was buried at Erfurt in September 1707. The theory accords with the suggestion that all three Cantatas belong to the Mühlhausen period. If so, it is probable that the libretto, a very ingenious mosaic of Scripture texts, was written by Eilmar for the occasion. It is the last in which we detect his influence. Bach’s appointment as Ducal Concertmeister at Weimar can be placed between 14th January and 19th March 1714(372) and, it is probable, was nearer the former date. He seems to have produced the first Cantata his new post required him to write on Sexagesima Sunday, which fell on 4th February in that year. From thence to the end of 1716 he produced nineteen Cantatas and collaborated with a writer whose libretti at length gave him a satisfactory literary medium. The new poet, Erdmann Neumeister, four of whose libretti Bach set to music immediately after his appointment, and a fifth a year later,(373) was considerably Bach’s senior.(374) As far back as 1700 he had begun to write a cycle of Cantata texts for the Ducal Chapel at Weissenfels, and pubushed it in 1704, with an explanatory Preface referred to later.(375) In 1708 he issued a second cycle for the Court of Rudolstadt, while in 1711 and 1714 third and fourth cycles were written for the Ducal Chapel at Eisenach. All four cycles were reissued in 1716,(376) with the addition of a fifth and a Preface, which lauded Neumeister as “the first German to give sacred music its fitting position by introducing and perfecting the Church Cantata.”(377)