Johann Sebastian Bach composed the secular cantata Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht (Time, which day and year doth make),^[1] BWV 134.1, BWV 134a,^[2] while he was in the service of the court of Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen.^{[lower-alpha 1]} Bach wrote the work as a serenata for the celebration of New Year's Day 1719.

The libretto by Christian Friedrich Hunold, an academic at the University of Halle, takes the form of a dialogue between two allegorical figures, Time and Divine Providence, representing the past and future, respectively. Bach set the words in eight movements consisting of alternating recitatives and arias, culminating in a choral finale. Most movements are duets of solo voices, an alto as Divine Providence and a tenor as Time. Even the closing movement features long duet passages, leading to parts for four voices. The singers are supported by a baroque instrumental ensemble of two oboes, two violins, viola and continuo. The character of the music is close to baroque opera, including French dances.

Later, in Leipzig, Bach used the secular cantata as the basis for a church cantata for the Easter Tuesday 1724, Ein Herz, das seinen Jesum lebend weiß. In the initial version of the Easter cantata, he made no changes to the 1719 music other than to omit two movements and replace the text with words for the occasion, written by an unknown author. In an adaptation for performances in the 1730s, he composed new recitatives for the Easter texts and made further changes to the music.

The cantata, written for a specific occasion, has not been recorded as often as other Bach cantatas. It has been used for congratulatory events such as the 80th birthday of Bach scholar Alfred Dürr, when the cantata title was chosen as that of an international conference about chronology in Bach's music, on which Dürr had focused.

Bach composed Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht in Köthen, where he served at the court of Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen, between 1717 and 1723.^[3][4] Bach had earlier been employed at the subordinate position of concert master at the Weimar court, now was Kapellmeister in Köthen, directing a qualified musical ensemble.^[5]

The prince was enthusiastic about music, was a good bass singer, and played violin, viola da gamba and harpsichord.^[5] The court adhered to the Reformed Church; therefore, Bach had no obligation to compose church music as he had in his earlier posts and later as Thomaskantor in Leipzig. In Köthen, he had to write cantatas only for the court's two secular feast days: the prince's birthday and New Year's Day. He wrote Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht as a congratulatory cantata for New Year's Day of 1719.^[6]

Only few cantatas survived of the twelve that Bach is thought to have composed in his six years while in Köthen, including Durchlauchtster Leopold, composed for the prince's birthday, probably in 1722.^[6] The homage cantatas were performed as serenatas or evening serenades. Their style is similar to opera of the period and includes dance-like music.^[7]

Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht is based on words by Christian Friedrich Hunold, whose pen name was Menantes.^[2][8] A novelist as well as a librettist, Hunold taught at the University of Halle, about 30 kilometres (20 mi) from Köthen. Bach collaborated with him on several cantatas between 1718 and 1720. Hunold published the text in the collection Auserlesene und theils noch nie gedruckte Gedichte unterschiedener Berühmten und geschickten Männer (Selected and partly never printed poems of different notable and skillful men) in Halle in 1719. Other texts published by Hunold include that of Bach's cantata Der Himmel dacht auf Anhalts Ruhm und Glück, BWV 66a, written for the prince's birthday on 10 December 1718.^[9][10] Literally "Heaven thought of Anhalt's glory and fortune", it has also been translated in a singable version as "Since Heaven Cared for Anhalt's Fame and Bliss".^[11]

The text of the serenata Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht, for most of the movements, recounts a dialogue between two allegorical figures: Time, representing the past, and Divine Providence, representing the future.^[1][7] The music remained in manuscript and, like most of Bach's works, was not printed in his lifetime. Bach led the first performance of the cantata on 1 January 1719.^[2][6][12]

The following table is based on the list at the Bach Cantatas website.^[26] While the derived Easter cantata was included in the complete recordings of Bach's church cantatas by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt, Helmuth Rilling, Ton Koopman, Pieter Jan Leusink, John Eliot Gardiner and Masaaki Suzuki, the festive secular cantata dedicated to the specific occasion has only been recorded a few times.^[27] In the table, ensembles playing period instruments in historically informed performances are indicated by a green background.

The first recording was made in 1996, conducted by Wolfgang Unger, who had revived in 1992 the Leipziger Universitätsmusik, ensembles formed by students and teachers of the University of Leipzig.^[30] He paired the cantata with Die Freude reget sich, BWV 36b.^[28]

Koopman recorded the cantata in 1998 as part of volume 10 of his complete recordings of Bach's church cantatas, combined with the Easter cantata based on it and with other church cantatas.^[29]

In 2000, Rilling recorded, as volume 139 of Bach's cantatas, five Congratulatory and Hommage Cantatas, two of them for the first time: Angenehmes Wiederau and Schwingt freudig euch empor.^[27]

In his 2011 recording, Suzuki paired the cantata with the Hunting Cantata and the Sinfonia in F major, BWV 1046a/1, from an early version of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, with the same scoring as the Hunting Cantata. Reviewer Parry-Ridout notes the "purity of tone" of the alto, the "richness and expression" of the tenor, and the virtuosity of both when competing in a duet.^[23]

The cantata was performed in 2011 to conclude the festival Köthener Herbst in the Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Saal of Schloss Köthen. The program was Carl Friedrich Abel's Symphony No. 1, Bach's cantata Durchlauchtster Leopold, BWV 173a, his Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, and finally Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht, with soloists Veronika Winter, Franz Vitzthum, Immo Schröder and Matthias Vieweg, and the ensemble Das Kleine Konzert, conducted by Hermann Max.^[31]

In 1998, an international musicological conference was held in Göttingen, Germany, on the occasion of the 80th birthday of Bach scholar Alfred Dürr, who had devoted his life to studies of Bach's works and their chronology. It was titled "'Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht': zur Chronologie des Schaffens von Johann Sebastian Bach", and featured a public performance of the cantata.^[32][33] Essays by the international musicologists who gathered, such as Hans-Joachim Schulze, Andreas Glöckner and Jean-Claude Zehnder, were published. Most of them focused specifically on the person's field of expertise in relation to Dürr's achievements.^[33]