The majority of Bach's sacred cantatas trace their compositional impetus to the weekly cycle of music demanded by the liturgy of the Leipzig Thomaskirche. However, the court of Weimar seems to have also required its choirmaster to write in this form. A manuscript autograph copy of the cantata BWV 61, Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland contains annotations on the inside cover (which fascinatingly detail the Advent services in Leipzig) dated 1714, one of the very few cantatas which may be so securely dated. The Lutheran chorale embedded in the opening chorus is proper to the first Sunday in Advent; the other texts similarly deal with the Advent of Christ and the blessings of the coming New Year. The Epistle proper to the day in the Lutheran liturgy is Romans 13:11-14, an exhortation to prepare our lives for the imminence of salvation.

The cantata's opening movement adopts the form of a "French overture," with successive sections Grave - Gai - Grave. This structure, and the characteristic dotted-rhythms which mark the genre seem superficially foreign to a German liturgical idiom. But the cosmopolitan use of a genre first used as the accompaniment to the French monarch's royal entrance into the Opéra elegantly symbolizes the royal Advent which this particular Sunday commences. The texts of the inner four movements, two pairs of one Recitative or Arioso with a metric Aria (in da Capo form), come from the pen of Erdmann Neumeister, and follow the more generic musical approach. Even within this more "conventional" musical structure, however, Bach demonstrates the freshness of his imagination, as in the master stroke of choosing heavy repetitive pizzicati to accompany the Bass recitative from Revelation 3:20, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." In place of a final movement which would commonly set the appropriate chorale verse in simple homophony, Bach chooses to culminate his setting with a brief, but energetic, full choral setting of the abgesang (second half) of another chorale, Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (the chorale for the feast of the Annunciation). The context for such a formal juxtaposition may lie in the practice within contemporary Lutheran preaching of quotation from hymn texts. The musical affect embodies the very theological tension of Advent: an awaiting with longing (Verlangen) and joy (Freuden) intermingled.

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