If Johann Sebastian Bach could be resurrected 255 years after his death and walk the streets of Leipzig today, what would impress him most would not be airplanes or computers but rather that his music is still being performed. Highly influenced by the laws of mathematics, Old Bach plied his formulas with the care of a researcher but did not think that the finished product was anything special. He didn’t even bother to preserve much of his immense output, and tossed off a brilliant sacred cantata every Sunday for his boys to perform as part of their general duties at St. Thomas’s Church (he was also in charge of bussing tables there). There were well over 300 of these isochronous assignments and not a bad one in the bunch, judging from the approximately 200 that are extant.

We in the 21st century revere this music much in the same way that Bach did his God, to whom he dedicated the algebraic purity of his compositions. That most spiritual of composers, the Catholic Anton Bruckner, never began a day of composition without first playing through several of the great Lutheran’s keyboard works to cleanse and purify his ear.

On Sunday afternoon at St. Bartholomew’s Church, the New York Baroque Soloists and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s presented four of these little masterpieces (BWV 29,69,120, and 193) under the rubric “Cantatas in Context.” The context was that all four were written for state occasions, specifically inaugurations. Three of the four contained closing chorales, and one, “Wir danken dir, Gott,” opened with a fully fleshed-out orchestral piece labeled by Bach as a sinfonia.

St. Luke’s, under previous music director Sir Charles Mackerras, developed a concept they call “rightsizing”: The orchestra performs music on modern instruments but endeavors to replicate the size of the original performing body. In this case, they made do with only 19 musicians. Although they have slipped some under their new leader, the disappointing Donald Runnicles, they can still be counted on for professional accompaniment.

The organizer of the series, Mary Dalton Greer, may have more solid credentials as a scholar than a conductor, but she kept the quartet of pieces, the quartet of soloists, and the chorus and orchestra reasonably together throughout the performance. Highlights included the powerful voices of alto Kirsten Sollek and bass Mark Risinger and the sweet solo violin of concertmaster Mayuki Fukuhara. Tenor William Ferguson, a previous Candide at City Opera, struggled a bit with the punishingly high cherubic tessitura of the Alleluia from BWV 29 (an aria that really needed one of those Thomaskirche boys), but delivered a lyrical line when only required to intone like a mere mortal. All of the singers should be praised for their restraint and the discipline that allowed them to keep unwanted romantic slides out of their performances.

This same deeply committed ensemble will be presenting Bach’s Christmas Oratorio here on Sunday, December 11. Although everyone clamors to sit up front, the parabolic ceiling of St. Bart’s actually makes the sound travel very well. If you come for Christmas, stop by and say hello: I’ll be the one sitting all alone at the back.