Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich (For Thee, O Lord, I long),[2] BWV 150,[b] is an early church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach composed for an unknown occasion.

Bach scored the work for four vocal parts and a small Baroque instrumental ensemble of two violins, bassoon and basso continuo.

Adjusting for transposition errors by the copyist, the initial letters should spell DOKTOR CONRAD MECKBACH and plausibly therefore the work was composed to mark this Mühlhausen councillor's 70th birthday in April 1707.

Possibly the cantata was heard a few weeks later after the end of Lent, and thus it may have formed a test-piece for the Mühlhausen appointment, composed in Arnstadt with Bach's supporter Meckbach in mind.

He scored it for four soloists (soprano, alto, tenor and bass), a four-part choir, and a small Baroque instrumental ensemble of two violins (Vl), bassoon (obbligato) (Fg) and basso continuo.

This chromatic figure, sometimes dubbed the "lamento bass" or passus duriusculus, has been utilized by composers as early as Monteverdi as a musical representation of anguish, pain, and longing.

The first chorus on the beginning of Psalm 25, "Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich. Mein Gott, ich hoffe auf dich."

The musicologist Tadashi Isoyama notes "the graphically chromatic phrases of the opening sinfonia and the following chorus; these are evocative of the suffering of the world".

The following soprano aria, "Doch bin und bleibe ich vergnügt" (Yet I am and remain content),[2] is also brief but includes significant word painting.

The penultimate movement, "Meine Augen sehen stets zu dem Herrn", features a "celestial haze" of instruments as part of a complex texture.

The final movement, "Meine Tage In Dem Leide", is a chaconne, a form which is typically constructed over a repeated ground bass.

[18] From a theological point of view, both the inversion of the lamento bass and the series of modulations in this movement express in baroque musical affect how Christ leads from sorrow to joy.