both being pregnant, Mary with Jesus and Elizabeth with John the Baptist. In Christianity, the feast commemorating that visit is called Visitation. It is a chosen opportunity to give more than ordinary attention to the Magnificat canticle in liturgy, while the feast celebrates the event tied to its origin. In Bach's time the feast day of Visitation fell on 2 July. The D major version of Bach's Magnificat (BWV 243.2) may have been performed on , as part of the church service in the St. Thomas Church (Thomaskirche) in Leipzig. That year there had been a period of mourning after the death of the sovereign, Augustus the Strong. During that mourning period, which ran from Sexagesima Sunday (15 February) to the fourth Sunday after Trinity (28 June), no concerted music was allowed in the churches. During that period Bach had been composing a Kyrie-Gloria mass in B minor which he dedicated to the successor, Frederick Augustus II, in a letter signed . The first occasion after the mourning period that re-allowed concerted church music was the feast of Visitation, Thursday . It is possible that Bach produced his new version of the Magnificat for this occasion, although Christmas of the same year as first performance date for the new version is possible too: it can not be determined with certainty on which day around 1732–1735 the D major version of the Magnificat was first performed, and until when Bach amended the score to its final state. Around 1733 Bach filed two cantatas by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, for the fifth and the sixth Sunday after Trinity (5 and 12 July in 1733): Bach may have relied on church music by other composers for the services in Leipzig in July 1733, while composing and copying out the performance parts of the extensive first part of the Mass in B minor. In 2003 Bach scholar Andreas Glöckner argued that the very first version of Bach's Magnificat, that is the E major version before the four Christmas interpolations were added to the autograph, was first performed on 2 July 1723. That would have been exactly ten years before the transposed version, and composed for the same Marian feast. Bach had taken up his post as in Leipzig on 30 May, the first Sunday after Trinity in 1723. Visitation was the first feast day of his tenure, which called for exceptionally festive music. The Christmas