Late church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach

The late church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach are sacred cantatas he composed after his fourth cycle of 1728–29. Whether Bach still composed a full cantata cycle in the last 20 years of his life is not known, but the extant cantatas of this period written for occasions of the liturgical year are sometimes referred to as his fifth cycle, as, according to his obituary, he would have written five such cycles – inasmuch as such cantatas were not late additions to earlier cycles (e.g. chorale cantatas added to the chorale cantata cycle), or were adopted in his oratorios.

Other cantatas of this period were written for special occasions such as the 200th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession in June 1730, funerals and weddings. Some of the information and compositions of this period of writing and performing of cantatas are missing, leading to different ways of presenting and connecting what is known about them by Bach-scholars. For instance, in the 19th century Spitta considered almost all of Bach's chorale cantatas as late cantatas,^[1] while later research connected the large majority of them to the composer's second year in Leipzig (1724–25).^[2]