Church cantata

A church cantata or sacred cantata is a cantata intended to be performed during a liturgical service. The liturgical calendar of the German Reformation era had, without counting Reformation Day and days between Palm Sunday and Easter, 72 occasions for which a cantata could be presented. Composers like Georg Philipp Telemann composed cycles of church cantatas comprising all 72 of these occasions (e.g. Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst). Such a cycle is called an "ideal" cycle, while in any given liturgical year feast days could coincide with Sundays, and the maximum amount of Sundays after Epiphany and the maximum amount of Sundays after Trinity could not all occur.