Last month, I got a box set of Bach's complete sacred cantatas. I've been listening to them at the rate of a disc per day since 21 March (Bach's birthday according to some calendars). One of the cantatas I listened to to-day is Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn, BWV 119. A particular phrase in the seventh movement caught my ear. It's an arpeggiation after which the fifth is repeated. I looked up the score and found it in the oboes at bars 69-70. Four bars earlier, it's also in the violin and viola parts. I've listened to the cantata only once (and just briefly looked at the notation in order to find some examples), but I think it appears in various instruments and arpeggiates different chords.
This particular phrase caught my ear because it's also in the first Orchestral Suite, BWV 1066. I've been listening to one of the suites everyday this year, and I listened to the first Orchestral Suite everyday from January through March, during which I apparently became pretty familiar with it. The phrase in question is in the violins and viola at the very beginning of the second gavotte, in the third movement. The note values are twice that of the notes in BWV 119 (with an even longer ending note), but otherwise, the rhythm is the same.
(notation found
here [BWV 119] and
here [BWV 1066], click the image to enlarge it)
I'm not sure if there's anything more to this than just Bach's re-using this particular phrase, but I found it noteworthy.
