Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Aria Bist du bei mir BWV 508
This lovely aria (whose opening line translates as “If you are with me”) appeared in the second of the two notebooks that Bach assembled in the 1720s for the musical instruction and enjoyment of his second wife, Anna Magdalena Bach. He borrowed the melody from Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel’s opera, Diomedes (1718).
Program note by Don Anderson.