Cantata

Cantata, in music, a vocal composition with instrumental accompaniment. The cantata originated in the early 17th century, simultaneously with opera and oratorio. The earliest type of cantata, known as the cantata da camera (Italian for “chamber cantata”), was written for solo voice on a secular text. It contained several sections in contrasting vocal styles, such as recitative and aria. Italian composers who wrote in this form include Giulio Caccini, Claudio Monteverdi, and Jacopo Peri. During the late 17th century, the cantata da camera developed into a composition for two or three voices, written mainly for religious services and known as the cantata da chiesa (church cantata). Its chief Italian exponents were Giacomo Carissimi and Alessandro Scarlatti. In Germany, under the leadership of Heinrich Schütz, Georg Philipp Telemann, Dietrich Buxtehude, Johann Sebastian Bach, and other composers, the cantata da chiesa developed into a far more elaborate form than its Italian model.

After the middle of the 18th century, the importance of the cantata as an independent genre declined. The term has since been applied to a wide variety of choral compositions with instrumental accompaniment, containing choruses, solos, arias, recitatives, and instrumental interludes, and resembling the oratorio if their text is sacred or resembling opera if their text is secular. In its sacred form, the cantata differs from an oratorio by being considerably shorter and less elaborate in both its vocal writing and its accompaniment. A secular cantata differs from opera in its lack of scenery, costumes, or staged action.

Composers of cantatas in the 19th and 20th centuries include Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Hector Berlioz, Edward Elgar, Claude Debussy, Aaron Copland, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, and Sergey Prokofiev.