Johann Sebastian Bach loved his coffee. Had we been alive in 1734 and regular patrons of Gottfried Zimmerman’s coffee house in Leipzig at 14 Katharinanstrasse, we might have been privileged to be one of the first to hear his Coffee Cantata performed by the Colegium Musicum, which he directed. As well as composing his sacred Cantatas, Bach wrote about fifty secular cantatas, his Coffee Cantata being one of them.
Bach wrote his Coffee Cantata as a response to the mocking by much of the press about the citizens of Leipzig’s love of coffee. Wherever coffee was introduced, it aroused great passions. Lovers of coffee were great supporters enjoying the social interaction it stimulated. However, coffee's detractors cited coffee drinking as unseemly, and leading to all kinds of reprehensible and dangerous practises.