"As a piece from an opera": this is how the Protestant theologian and poet Erdmann Neumeister (1671-1756) wanted the Geistliche Cantaten to be understood, which he first published in 1702. No wonder, then, that numerous church music composers rushed to this publication in order to draw textual material from it to fulfill their duties: The varied structure of the sometimes quite drastically rhymed poetry suggested settings in which recitatives, arias, choruses and chorales alternated quite naturally and could bring the respective theological subject to the devout congregations in a not exactly ascetic manner. There were, of course, also more austere cantatas in which psalms or other passages from the Holy Scriptures were used, sometimes exclusively, sometimes in combination with new poetic creations. The present production combines four examples from the pens of two contemporaries who successfully tried out different styles in an apparently relatively undogmatic phase.