Spitta has dealt exhaustively(378) with the evolution and construction of the Neumeister libretto. It need only be remarked that it adapted a secular or operatic apparatus to the service of religion, and that the innovation, hateful to many, triumphed because of Neumeister’s delicate handling of it. He perfected the new form, however, in stages. “A Cantata,” he insisted in his 1704 Preface, “is simply a fragment of Opera made up of Aria and Recitativo.” But the restriction excluded from the Cantata its most appropriate material. In his 1708 cycle he found a place for the chorus. Finally, he admitted the Bible stanza and congregational hymn. With their inclusion the Cantata libretto assumed the form familiar to us in Bach’s use. It represents a combination of secular Opera and ecclesiastical Motet. The free Arias and Recitativi are derived from the one, the Bible stanzas and congregational hymns perpetuate the traditions of the other. Unity of design is stamped on the whole by its general subordination to the Gospel for the Day. Thus, at the moment when Bach was about to devote his genius to the Cantata, Neumeister opportunely provided him with a libretto singularly adapted to the end Bach had in view, and appropriate to the musical expression by which he proposed to secure it. He adhered to it almost to the end of his life, and found unfailing inspiration in Neumeister’s sincerity, delicacy, and uniformly religious outlook. Neumeister’s Arias, with a single exception,(379) are hymn-like in mood and metre. His Recitativi are reflective and prayerful, rarely oratorical or pictorial, simple communings upon the Gospel themes which the libretto handles.(380) Bach’s early introduction to Neumeister’s texts is explained by the close relations between the Courts of Weimar and Eisenach, by his associations with his own birthplace, and his intimacy with Georg Philipp Telemann, Kapellmeister there, for whose use Neumeister’s third and fourth cycles were written.(381) Bach set, in all, seven of the libretti—four from the fourth cycle,(382) one from the third,(383) and two from the first,(384) one of which (No. 142) differs so much from the published version as to raise the question whether Bach did not receive it direct from Neumeister in the form in which he set it.(385) That Bach should have set no more than seven of Neumeister’s texts(386) is strange. He shrank, perhaps, from appropriating libretti on which his friend Telemann had a prior claim.(387) But the reason is found rather in the fact that at Weimar Bach discovered in 1715 a local poet of first-rate ability who, with perhaps but one exception, wrote the libretti of all the Cantatas he composed during the last two years of his Weimar appointment.