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As part of Radio 3's Classical Voice season, all this week Donald Macleod explores Bach's vocal music.

In April 1723, after a great deal of political wrangling between rival factions on the Leipzig town council, Bach was appointed Cantor of the celebrated Thomasschule. At last he had the opportunity to realize a vision he had had, 15 years and several jobs earlier, in his post as organist of St Blasius's Church in Mühlhausen. That vision - his "ultimate goal", he called it - was the creation of "a regulated church music". In practice, this simple-sounding aspiration entailed the Herculean labour of producing - not to mention preparing for performance - a cantata for every single Sunday and feast-day of the church year. Almost incredibly, he kept this up, with minimal reliance on previously composed material, for the first three years of his tenure at Leipzig - a period during which he was, in short, a one-man cantata factory. Today, Donald Macleod focuses on the first of those annual cantata cycles. The emotional range is huge, from the festive cheer of Cantata 40: 'Darzu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes' to the thrilling, borderline-operatic drama of Cantata 81: 'Jesus schläft, was sol ich hoffen?'.