Bach composed the cantata in his fourth year in Leipzig for the twentieth Sunday after Trinity. It is counted as part of his third annual cycle of cantatas. The prescribed readings for the Sunday were from the Epistle to the Ephesians, "walk circumspectly ... filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:15–21), and from the Gospel of Matthew, the parable of the great banquet (Matthew 22:1–14). The German term used in Luther's Bible translation is Hochzeitsmahl (wedding meal). The cantata is termed a Dialogus, being a dialogue between the Soul and Jesus, her bridegroom. The source for the dialogue is, here as in many works of the 17th century, the Song of Songs. Poet Christoph Birkmann derived from the wedding feast of the Gospel the Soul as the bride whom Jesus invited to their wedding, while the other characters of the story are not mentioned in the cantata. The poet alludes to the Bible several times, comparing the bride to a dove as in Song of Songs 5:2 and Song of Songs 6:9, referring to the Lord's feast (Isaiah 25:6), to the bond between the Lord and Israel (Hosea 2:21), to faithfulness until death (Revelation 3:20), and in the final movement to "Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee." (Jeremiah 31:3). Instead of a closing chorale, Bach combines this idea, sung by the bass, with the seventh stanza of Philipp Nicolai's mystical wedding song "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern", given to the soprano.

Date of composition 1726
First published 1860 in Leipzig, Germany
Type Cantata
Tonality E Major
Catalogue BWV 49
Approx. duration 29 minutes
Spoken language German
Instruments Voice (Soprano)
Voice (Bass)
Chorus/Choir
Oboe d'amore
Organ
Strings
Continuo
Autotranslations beta Jean-Sébastien Bach: Ich geh' und suche mit Verlangen en mi majeur, BWV 49 ""I go and seek you with longing""
Johann Sebastian Bach: Ich geh' und suche mit Verlangen in mi maggiore, BWV 49 ""I go and seek you with longing""
Johann Sebastian Bach: Ich geh' und suche mit Verlangen E-dur, BWV 49 ""I go and seek you with longing""