JS Bach: Master of the Cantata 

For Bach, the cantata was an essential part of worship: each one being a concerto for the church that could be performed after a reading from the gospels. A consistent part of his compositional work, throughout his active creative life, it is thought that Bach wrote around 200 of these pieces. (Though, if that number is correct, at least a hundred of them have been lost.) Still, as this playlist demonstrates, there remains a great bounty of beautiful, devotional music left to discover from this staggering catalogue.