cantata

A musical composition, often using a sacred text, comprising recitatives, arias, and choruses.

[Italian (aria) cantata, sung (aria), feminine past participle of cantare, to sing, from Latin cantāre.]

The most important genre of vocal chamber music in the Baroque period; the principal musical constituent of the Lutheran service. Since the late 18th century the term has been applied to a wide variety of works, sacred and secular, mostly for chorus and orchestra, from Beethoven's cantatas on the death and succession of emperors to the patriotic Soviet cantatas of Shostakovich.

In Italy the word ‘cantata’, first used for strophic variations in the Cantade et arie of Alessandro Grandi (i), soon came to be applied to pieces alternating recitative, arioso and aria-like sections. From c 1650 this was the usual pattern, but the main cantata writers of the early 17th century, Luigi Rossi and Marazzoli, preferred the arietta corte, a single aria with changes of metre. Both these composers worked in Rome, the chief centre for the cantata in the 17th century, where Carissimi, one of the form's first great masters, was also active. In the early cantatas of his pupil, Alessandro Scarlatti, and those of Stradella and Steffani, the distinction between recitative and aria is clear and the number of sections usually smaller. By the end of the century historical, classical and humorous subjects were almost entirely swamped by Arcadian verses describing amatory feelings in a pastoral setting. The cantata spirituale set a sacred text in the vernacular.

In Scarlatti's cantatas after c 1700, the structure is standardized as two or three da capo arias separated by recitative. Most are for soprano and continuo. This type was cultivated by other Italians, including Bassani, G. Bononcini, Vivaldi and B. Marcello, and by Handel during his Italian visit (1705/6-10). Many of Handel's cantatas, however, are distinguished from the Italians' in tonal structure and dramatic power. The later development of the Italian cantata was largely in the hands of such Neapolitan opera composers as Leo, Vinci and Pergolesi, in whose works full string accompaniment becomes the norm.

In Germany, the Kantate was primarily a sacred genre, though the term itself was not generally used during the Baroque period. A step towards the cantata as a multi-sectional form was taken in psalm compositions by Tunder, Buxtehude and others, whose chorale settings are akin to true cantatas since they use a closed form for each stanza. But it was the mixing of texts, especially biblical and poetic texts in what has been called the ‘concerto-aria’ cantata, that decisively established the German form.

Some of Bach's cantatas are retrospective in their use of a plain chorale text, but most show the effects of Neumeister's reforms of c 1700, with recitative and da capo aria dominant constituents. Cantatas were composed in high numbers - Telemann and Graupner both wrote well over 1000 - and usually grouped into annual cycles. Bach's are untypical in their quality and their diversity. In the hands of lesser composers the genre became increasingly standardized, and in the later 18th century the petrifying of structures and the allegorical texts made it seem outmoded and fossilized.

Secular cantatas in German and Italian were composed by Keiser, Telemann, Bach and others, but this type was never cultivated to the extent it was in Italy.

In France and England the secular cantata was essentially an 18th-century genre, emulating the Italian type. J.B. Morin is credited with introducing the French cantate in his first book (1706). It set the pattern for French cantatas of the next two decades, with three arias, each introduced by recitative; mythological and amatory texts were favoured. Of later cantatas Clérambault's are among the finest. Rameau also wrote cantatas before 1733, after which the genre declined in favour of the new, shorter Rococo cantatille. The English cantata arose largely from a desire on the part of 18th-century poets and composers to demonstrate the suitability of their language to Italianate recitative and aria styles. J.C. Pepusch claimed his Six English Cantatas (1710) as the first of their kind; his two sets are among the best. After 1740, the Italianate structure was relaxed and the English penchant for light, agreeable melody asserted itself. The change, seen in Stanley's cantatas, is complete in Arne's set of 1755 which, with their accompaniments of full strings and woodwind, mark the end of the cantata as a chamber form in England.

For more information on cantata, visit Britannica.com.

A musical composition for voice and instruments and including choruses, solos, and recitatives.

"Sung". A multi-movement vocal work for concert or church performance by a choir, sometimes soloists, and an instrumental ensemble.

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A cantata (literally 'sung', derived from the Italian word 'cantare') is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment and often containing more than one movement.

Contents 1 Historical context 2 Differences between other musical forms 3 References 4 See also 5 External links

Historical context

The term did not exist prior to the 16th century, when all "cultured" music was vocal. It originated in the early 17th century simultaneously with opera and oratorio. With the rise of instrumental music during this period the term emerged as the instrumental art became sufficiently developed to be embodied in sonatas. From the middle of the 17th until late in the 18th century a favorite form of Italian chamber music was the cantata for one or two solo voices, with accompaniment of harpsichord and perhaps a few other solo instruments. It consisted at first of a declamatory narrative or scene in recitative, held together by a primitive aria repeated at intervals. Fine examples may be found in the church music of Giacomo Carissimi; and the English vocal solos of Henry Purcell (such as Mad Tom and Mad Bess) show the utmost that can be made of this archaic form. With the rise of the da capo aria, the cantata became a group of two or three arias joined by recitative. George Frideric Handel's numerous Italian duets and trios are examples on a rather large scale. His Latin motet Silete Venti, for soprano solo, shows the use of this form in church music.

Differences between other musical forms

	"Dialogus inter Christum et fidelem animam" A sacred cantata by Dieterich Buxtehude.
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	Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147, by J. S. Bach
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The Italian solo cantata tended, when on a large scale, to become indistinguishable from a scene in an opera, in the same way the church cantata, solo or choral, is indistinguishable from a small oratorio or portion of an oratorio. This is equally evident whether we examine the unparalleled church cantatas of Bach, of which nearly 200 are extant (see list of cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach), or the Chandos Anthems of Handel. In Johann Sebastian Bach's case many of the larger cantatas are actually called oratorios; and the Christmas Oratorio is a collection of six church cantatas actually intended for performance on six different days, though together forming as complete an artistic whole as any classical oratorio.

The essential point, however, in Bach's church cantatas is that they formed part of a church service. Many of Bach's greatest cantatas begin with an elaborate chorus followed by a couple of arias and recitatives, and end with a plain chorale. This has often been commented upon as an example of Bach's indifference to artistic climax in the work as a whole. But no one will maintain this who realizes the place which the church cantata occupied in the Lutheran church service. The text was carefully based upon the gospel or lessons for the day; unless the cantata was short the sermon probably took place after the first chorus or one of the arias, and the congregation joined in the final chorale. Thus the unity of the service was the unity of the music; and, in the cases where all the movements of the cantata were founded on one and the same chorale-tune, this unity has never been equalled, except by those 16th-century masses and motets which are founded upon the Gregorian tones of the festival for which they are written.

In modern times the term cantata is applied almost exclusively to choral, as distinguished from solo vocal music. It is just possible to recognize as a distinct artistic type that kind of early 19th-century cantata in which the chorus is the vehicle for music more lyric and songlike than the oratorio style, though at the same time not excluding the possibility of a brilliant climax in the shape of a light order of fugue. Ludwig van Beethoven's Glorreiche Augenblick is a brilliant pot-boiler in this style; Carl Maria von Weber's Jubel Cantata is a typical specimen, and Felix Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht is the classic. Mendelssohn's Symphony Cantata, the Lobgesang, is a hybrid work, partly in the oratorio style. It is preceded by three symphonic movements, a device avowedly suggested by Beethoven's ninth symphony; but the analogy is not accurate, as Beethoven's work is a symphony of which the fourth movement is a choral finale of essentially single design, whereas Mendelssohn's Symphony Cantata is a cantata with three symphonic preludes. The full lyric possibilities of a string of choral songs were realized by Johannes Brahms in his Rinaldo, that- like the Walpurgisnacht- was set to a text by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The remaining types of cantata (beginning with Beethoven's Meeres-stille, and including most of those by Brahms's and many notable small English choral works) demonstrate the many ways a poem may be set to choral music.

References

See also

• Motet
• Oratorio
• Sonata

External links

• Definitions of musical terms
• Dictionary of musical terminology, with audio pronunciation of the many foreign terms

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - kantate

Nederlands (Dutch)
cantate

Français (French)
n. - cantate

Deutsch (German)
n. - (Mus.) Kantate

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (μουσ.) καντάτα

Italiano (Italian)
cantata

Português (Portuguese)
n. - cantata (f) (Mús.)

Русский (Russian)
кантата

Español (Spanish)
n. - cantata

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - kantat

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
清唱剧, 大合唱, 圣歌谣曲

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 清唱劇, 大合唱, 聖歌謠曲

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 음악의 칸타타

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - カンタータ

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) انشودة دينيه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮יצירה מוסיקלית קצרה עם עלילה, זמרים בודדים ובד"כ גם מקהלה, קנטטה‬

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