It is for understandable reasons that “Non sa che sia dolore” BWV 209 was not readily welcomed in Bach’s performance repertoire. As one of only two works set to an Italian text, the soprano cantata is at the periphery of the Thomascantor’s usual creative output. In addition, uncertainty surrounding the time and occasion of the composition, combined with the fact that the score was first handed down by Bach’s early biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel, has repeatedly called the work’s authenticity into question.

While the cantata’s libretto can scarcely escape criticism for its simplistic Italian – the text appears to derive from a somewhat unsuccessful adaptation of poems by Giovanni Battista Guarini (1598) and Pietro Metastasio (1722/29) – the musical quality is outstanding and calls to mind Bach’s late style in his B-minor overture for flute and orchestra (BWV 1067). Unlike his contemporaries Handel and Heinichen, Bach had little opportunity to devote himself to the fashionable genre of the Italian chamber cantata, which lends “Non sa che sia dolore” and its companion work “Amore traditore” BWV 203 the character of a compositional study. Such an approach would be entirely in keeping with Bach’s commitment to lifelong learning.

The cantata begins with an expansive sinfonia for transverse flute, strings and basso continuo. The edgy B-minor key, the driving insistence of the motivic writing and the idiosyncratic three-part structure make it nigh unthinkable that the composition could have originated outside Bach’s artistic circle. At the same time, the instrumental prelude cultivates a tragic tone that sits well with the cantata’s overarching theme of a farewell between friends. Accordingly, the expressive string accompagnato in the first recitative conjures images of considerable pathos at the pain of losing a treasured friend, who has apparently chosen to follow the path of Minerva, goddess of knowledge. That the journey in fact led to the Franconian region of Ansbach is suggested by a later reference in the fourth movement. Whether the unknown dedicatee was Bach’s pupil Johann Christoph Mizler, the jurist Lorenz Albrecht Beck, or even Johann Matthias Gesner, who left his post as rector of the St Thomas school in 1734, will likely remain unresolved for the foreseeable future.

Set in the dark, shimmering key of E minor, the first aria again allows the transverse flute to stand out from the compact string texture with striking figures, ere the solo soprano gives expression to the age-old tropes surrounding “dolorosa partita” through pliant sighs and noble ascending gestures. The maritime metaphors of wave and shore, for their part, are probably better understood as poetic imagery than as references to a real sea voyage. Listening attentively to this demanding movement, it is difficult to escape the impression of a highly accomplished exercise in style, an impression that likewise applies to the eight Italian arias composed around 1733 by Bach’s Dresden colleague Jan Dismas Zelenka.

The following short recitative addresses the tension between zeitgeist and timeless values in broader terms and accordingly suggests that the dedicatee should move to a place inhabited by more illustrious scholars. This then introduces a transition to the brighter mood of the closing aria with its buoyant, gigue-like modus. Here, the passage set in bright G major represents a light-hearted, distinctly Bachian brand of intelligent musical wit embarking on a journey that is as daring as it is confident. One of the appealing enigmas surrounding this oddly “homeless” music is that, in the final setting as throughout the cantata, the light-footed elegance expected of the genre converges with a certain excess of learned gravitas. Should the true addressee of this musical send-off one day be identified, we may perhaps also discover whether the work was an “over-fulfilled” commission, a collaborative work whose components, like the libretto, do not quite form a coherent whole, or perhaps a character portrait in sound.