 In addition to the church cantatas composed for occasions of the liturgical year, Bach wrote sacred cantatas for functions like weddings or (the inauguration of a new town council).His secular cantatas, around 50 known works, less than half of which surviving with both text and music, were written for academic functions of the University of Leipzig, or anniversaries and entertainment among the nobility and in society, some of them (congratulatory cantatas) and (homage cantatas).Bach's cantatas usually require four soloists and a four-part choir, but he also wrote solo cantatas (i.e.