In 1729, Bach took over the directorship of the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig, one of two concert organizations in the city that met during the winter months. The society Bach became involved with had originally been founded by Telemann in 1702, and held its meetings at Zimmerman's coffeehouse on Friday evenings. It was for the Collegium Musicum that Bach composed many of his concertos, many of them adapted from existing works composed during his Cöthen days (1717-1723) and already reused in cantata movements. Many thus involve considerable problems of reconstruction, the Oboe Concerto in D minor being a particularly difficult example. It takes as its basis an oboe concerto Bach started but abandoned after the first few bars, presumably because he was not happy with it. As heard today, the outer movements are reconstructed from the sinfonias, known to be part of a lost concerto, which open each part of a cantata for solo alto, Geist und Seele wird verwirret, BWV 35 (1726). It is also possible that the cantata's first aria, a da capo movement in siciliana rhythm, formed the original central slow movement. Since this presents special reconstruction difficulties, the movement is therefore normally being one adapted from the opening sinfonia of the cantata Ich steh mit einem Fuss im Grabe, BWV 156 (1729), also familiar as the slow movement of the Harpsichord Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056.

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