Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 227

Jesu, meine Freude, BWV 227, is a motet composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. The work, which takes its title from the hymn "Jesu, meine Freude" by Johann Franck on which it is based, is also known as Motet No. 3 in E minor. The stanzas of the chorale are interspersed with passages from the Epistle to the Romans.

The work

There are six authenticated Bach motets (BWV 225–230), BWV 228 appears to have been written at Weimar and the other five for St Thomas's Church, Leipzig, between 1723 and 1727. A seventh has only recently been subjected to some scholarly doubt as to its authorship. Jesu, meine Freude was written in 1723, Bach's first year in Leipzig, for the funeral (on 18 July 1723) of Johanna Maria Käsin, the wife of that city's postmaster. Although numbered as the third of the set, it is probably the second in order of composition, as it is the earliest of the ones written at Leipzig. It is also the longest and most musically complex of the set. The 5th voice of the chorus is a second soprano part of harmonic richness. Bach split the soprano line relatively rarely, but he also did so in the Magnificat in E-flat major, premiered the same year.