The preface to one of his volumes of poetry indicates that the entire volume was set to music by Bach in 1729, although only nine cantatas based on that particular volume have survived to the present day. Since some of Bach's most important works, in particular the Coffee Cantata (BWV 211) and St. Matthew Passion (BWV 244), used Henrici's librettos, this may indicate a tragic loss of Bach's music.
External links
Biographical sketch (in German) (http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/h/henrici_f.shtml)
Picander also wrote the texts for Bach's Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan BWV 201 and Laßt uns sorgen BWV 213; his Coffee Cantata BWV 211 was perhaps not written expressly for Bach.
The last text of a Bachcantata published by Picander is that of the Peasant Cantata BWV 212 (1742), printed in 1751.
Picander was then serving as Assessment and Liquor Tax Collector, Wine Inspector and Vizier, a post he held from 1740 until his death.
Klaus Häfner assumes that BWV 201 together with two other cantatas of the same length, of which only the texts by Picander have survived, formed a kind of trilogy produced by Bach when he had assumed his duties as director of the ''Collegium Musicum'' in the spring of 1729.
Picander had a partiality for provokingly lascivious wording and had ''the most offensive and nasty things printed''.
From such opinions on his poetry, it does not appear very surprising that Picander should have chosen the sexual relationship between two males as subject of an aria, though he also could have let Apollo sing of one of his 42 female ''courtesans'' that are listed in Hederich's mythological encyclopedia.
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