List of secular cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach

Apart from his hundreds of church cantatas Johann Sebastian Bach wrote secular cantatas in Weimar, Köthen and Leipzig, for instance for members of the Royal-Polish and Prince-electoral Saxonian family (e.g. Trauer-Ode), or other public or private occasions (e.g. Hunting Cantata). The text of these cantatas was occasionally in dialect (e.g. Peasant Cantata) or in Italian (e.g. Amore traditore). Many of the secular cantatas went lost, but for some of these the text and the occasion are known, for instance when Picander later published their libretto (e.g. BWV Anh. 11–12). Some of the secular cantatas had a plot carried by mythological figures of Greek antiquity (e.g. Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan), others were almost miniature buffo operas (e.g. Coffee Cantata).

Extant secular cantatas are published in the New Bach Edition (Neue Bach-Ausgabe, NBA), Series I, volumes 35 to 40, with the two Italian cantatas included in volume 41. The Bach-Digital website lists 50 secular cantatas by Bach. Less than half of Bach's known secular cantatas survive with music. For most of the others at least the libretto survives. For many of the secular cantatas Bach reused music he had composed before (e.g. the first Brandenburg Concerto resurfaced in a secular cantata), and even more often did he parody secular cantatas into church music, for instance his Christmas Oratorio opens with music from a secular cantata.

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