Cantata

Historical context

The term originated in the early 17th century, simultaneously with opera and oratorio. Prior to that, all "cultured" music was vocal. With the rise of instrumental music, the term appeared, while instrumental art became sufficiently developed to be embodied in sonatas. From the beginning of the 17th century until late in the 18th, the cantata for one or two solo voices with accompaniment of basso continuo (and perhaps a few solo instruments) was a principal form of Italian vocal chamber music.

A cantata consisted 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 from other musical forms

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 one examines the church cantatas of Bach, of which nearly 200 are extant (see List of Bach cantatas) or the Chandos Anthems of Handel. In Johann Sebastian Bach's case, some 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 they form as complete an artistic whole as any classical oratorio.

Baroque

During the baroque era, the term "cantata" generally retained its original Italian usage to describe a secular vocal piece of extended length, often in different sections, and usually Italianate in style. At the same time, vocal pieces of similar scope, often with several singers, and various instruments, were in great demand for the services of the Lutheran church. Such pieces were usually called geistliche Konzerte (singular: geistliches Konzert, meaning sacred concerto). Many of these pieces were simply called by their opening text. Such pieces for the liturgy or other occasions were not only composed by Bach but also by Dieterich Buxtehude, Christoph Graupner, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel and Georg Philipp Telemann, to name a few. The editors of the Bach Gesellschaft adopted "sacred cantata" as a convenient catchall for most of Bach's liturgical pieces. The term was then retroactively applied by Philipp Spitta to refer to comparable works by composers from Heinrich Schütz onwards. Many secular cantatas were composed for events in the nobility. They were so similar in form to the sacred ones that many of them were parodied (in parts or completely) to sacred cantatas, for example in Bach's Christmas Oratorio.

Bach cantatas

Main article: Bach cantata, List of Bach cantatas

Johann Sebastian Bach, almost 200 of whose cantatas survive, is a notable contributor to the genre.

His cantatas are usually written for a baroque orchestra consisting of a string section, an oboe section, and a continuo group, timpani and brass were sometimes added on festive occasions such as Christmas or Easter. The vocal forces consisted of a four-part choir and soloists. Bach also wrote some cantatas for only one solo singer (ex. BWV 51).

Graupner's cantatas

Christoph Graupner was Hofkapellmeister at the court of Hesse-Darmstadt and provided over 1,400 cantatas during his nearly 50 years of employment there, making him the most significant contributor to the genre. While only a handful of Bach's cantatas contain accompanied chorales (the vocal parts are usually doubled by the instrumental parts), nearly all of Graupner's chorales feature elaborate ritornello sections. This is possibly because Bach's Leipzig congregation was expected to sing along with them, but the Darmstadt court was not. Also, many of Graupner's cantatas exploit elaborate orchestral effects and use exotic instrumentation, such as chalumeau, flûte d'amour, oboe d'amore, viola d'amore, trumpets, horns and timpani. See: List of cantatas by Christoph Graupner.

Classical and romantic period

The term "cantata" came to be applied almost exclusively to choral works, as distinguished from solo vocal music. In early 19th-century cantatas, the chorus is the vehicle for music more lyric and songlike than in oratorio, not excluding the possibility of a brilliant climax in a fugue as in Ludwig van Beethoven's Der glorreiche Augenblick, Carl Maria von Weber's Jubel-Kantate, and Felix Mendelssohn's Die erste Walpurgisnacht. Anton Bruckner composed several Name-day cantatas, a Festive Cantata and two secular cantatas (Germanenzug and Helgoland). Bruckner's Psalm 146 is also in cantata form. 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, which, like the Walpurgisnacht—was set to a text by Goethe. Other cantatas, Beethoven's Meeresstille, works of Brahms and many notable small English choral works, such as cantatas of John Henry Maunder and John Stanley, find various ways to set poetry to choral music. The competition for the French Prix de Rome requires that each candidate submit a cantata. Hector Berlioz failed in three attempts before finally winning in 1830 with Sardanapale. While almost all of the Prix de Rome cantatas have long since been forgotten (along with their composers, for the most part), Debussy's prize-winning L'enfant prodigue (1884, following his unsuccessful Le gladiateur of 1883) is still performed occasionally today. Late in the century, Gustav Mahler wrote his early Das klagende Lied on his own words between 1878 and 1880, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor created a successful trilogy of cantatas, The Song of Hiawatha between 1898 and 1900.

Twentieth century and beyond

References

1. [[Michael Kennedy (music critic). Kennedy, Michael]] "Cantata", ''The Oxford Dictionary of Music'', second edition, revised (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) {{ISBN. 0-19-861459-4.
2. (8 February 2022). "Cantata Definition: What Is a Cantata in Music?".
3. Timms, Colin, [[Nigel Fortune]], Malcolm Boyd, [[Friedhelm Krummacher]], [[David Tunley]], James R. Goodall, and Juan José Carreras. 2001. "Cantata", §I. ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by [[Stanley Sadie]] and [[John Tyrrell (professor of music). John Tyrrell]]. London: Macmillan Publishers.
4. Tovey, Donald. Francis. ''In Musical Forms'', {{Full citation needed. (April 2016: Meridian Books, 1956; reprinted by arrangement by Oxford University Press.{{Page needed). (April 2016)
5. "Cantata, § II: The German cantata to 1800".
6. "What is a Cantata?".
7. Richard Kram, ''The Cantata Chorales of Christoph Graupner'', 2013
8. "Cantata in a Castle".
9. (2015-09-28). "The Story of the Cantata that Led to the Famous Yellow River Piano Concerto".