List of secular cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach

[4] Many of the secular cantatas were 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).

A few years later, the cantata was performed again, in a modified version, for his employer Ernest Augustus I, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.

Up to this point Bach's secular cantatas are generally in the Serenata format, lighthearted music with allegorical characters conversing about the excellence of the employer, and expressing their best wishes.

[9][13] From 1723 until his death in 1750 Bach was employed as Thomaskantor in Leipzig: the bulk of his around 20 extant secular cantatas originated in this period.

Bach wrote or re-staged at least 36 secular cantatas in the last 25 years of his life, and around half of these were on librettos by Picander.

Occasions for Bach's secular cantatas written in Leipzig included Birthdays and name days for successive prince-electors of Saxony and other rulers, and their relatives, of principalities and duchies in Saxony, and similar occasions for academics of the university of Leipzig.

In his Leipzig period part of Bach's secular cantata production is no longer in the Serenata format, but rather dramma per musica, implying a dramatic plot beyond mythological figures congratulating or paying homage to the person in whose honour the cantata was written.

The BWV numbers assigned to the secular cantatas are random with regard to chronology and occasion.