page_title: Bist du bei mir
section_title: 1707–1732
hierarchical_section_title: Bist du bei mir / History / 1707–1732
caption_attribution_description: English: Orchestral version of Stölzel's Bist du bei mir (2nd to 4th system)
context_page_description: "Bist du bei mir, geh ich mit Freuden" is an aria from Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel's opera Diomedes, which was first staged on 16 November 1718. The aria is best known as "Bist du bei mir", BWV 508, a version for voice and continuo found as No. 25 in the 1725 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach.
context_section_description: From 1707 to 1710 Stölzel was a student at Leipzig University. At that time, Melchior Hoffmann was conductor of the Collegium Musicum founded by Telemann, which had Johann Georg Pisendel as its concert master. Hoffmann was director musices of the New Church (German: Neue Kirche), and his operas were performed in the Oper am Brühl (transl. Opera at the Brühl) when it reopened in 1708. Stölzel, eager to cultivate his interest in music, visited such venues of Leipzig's high-quality music life. Eventually he became an assistant of Hoffmann, initially as copyist, and later, shortly before leaving Leipzig, he saw his first compositions performed under Hoffmann's direction.
  Bach visited the court at Gotha in 1711 and 1717. In 1711 he had been hired as performer on the organ, and during the second of these documented visits he performed his so-called Weimarer Passion during Holy Week. Stölzel moved to Bayreuth in 1717, where he was appointed to write church music for the second centenary of Reformation Day (31 October). For the 39th birthday of George William, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth (16 November) he composed a theatrical serenata, Der Liebe Sieges- und Friedes-Palmen. For the Margrave's next birthday he wrote Diomedes oder die triumphierende Unschuld (transl. Diomedes or the triumphant innocence), a large-scale opera which was staged on 16 November 1718. Before moving to Gotha the next year, where he would remain for the rest of his life, Stölzel still composed one further birthday serenata for the Margrave in Bayreuth.
  In 1720, three years before he became Thomaskantor in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach started the Klavierbüchlein (keyboard-booklet) for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann. Some years later Wilhelm Friedemann copied a four-movement keyboard suite by Stölzel in this notebook, to which his father added a trio (BWV 929). In 1725 Johann Sebastian started the second notebook for his second wife Anna Magdalena. In the mean while he had assumed his position of cantor and music director in Leipzig: among many responsibilities that came with that title, music in the New Church now resorted under him. From 1729 he also became director of the Collegium Musicum founded by Telemann.
  Meanwhile in Gotha, Stölzel had presented his first Passion oratorio, Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld, in Holy Week of 1720, and composed a new cantata cycle every few years, among which:
  in the early 1720s a setting of Benjamin Schmolck's String-Music (Saitenspiel) cantata libretto cycle.
  for the 1731–32 liturgical year, a setting of Schmolck's Namebook (Namenbuch) cantata libretto cycle.
caption: Orchestral version of Stölzel's "Bist du bei mir" (2nd to 4th system)
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