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A cantata (; ; literally "sung", past participle feminine singular of the Italian language verb cantare, "to sing") is a vocal music composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir.
The meaning of the term changed over time, from the simple single-voice madrigal of the early 17th century, to the multi-voice "cantata da camera" and the "cantata da chiesa" of the later part of that century, from the more substantial dramatic forms of the 18th century to the usually sacred-texted 19th-century cantata, which was effectively a type of short oratorio.Kennedy, Michael "Cantata", The Oxford Dictionary of Music, second edition, revised (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) . Cantatas for use in the liturgy of church services are called church cantata or sacred cantatas; other cantatas can be indicated as secular cantatas. Several cantatas were, and still are, written for special occasions, such as Christmas cantatas. Christoph Graupner, Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Sebastian Bach composed cycles of church cantatas for the occasions of the liturgical year.
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.Tovey, Donald. Francis. In Musical Forms, : Meridian Books, 1956; reprinted by arrangement by Oxford University Press.
His cantatas are usually written for a baroque orchestra consisting of a string section, an oboe section, and a basso 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).
In the early part of the century, secular cantatas once again became prominent, while the 19th-century tradition of sacred cantatas also continued. Ralph Vaughan Williams composed both kinds: "festival" cantatas such as Toward the Unknown Region (1907), Five Mystical Songs (1911), and Five Tudor Portraits (1936), and sacred cantatas including Sancta civitas (1926), Benedicite (1930), Dona nobis pacem (1936), and Hodie (1954). Joseph Ryelandt also composed secular and sacred cantatas, such as Le chant de la pauvreté Op. 92 in 1928 and Veni creator Op. 123 in 1938. Béla Bartók composed the secular Cantata Profana, subtitled "The Nine Splendid Stags" and based on a Romanian folk tale, in 1930. Although it began as a song cycle (as reflected also by its title), Arnold Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder (1900–1903/1910–11) evolved into one of the century's largest secular cantatas. Paul Hindemith composed three works he designated as cantatas: Die Serenaden, Op. 35, for soprano, oboe, viola, and cello (1924), Mahnung an die Jugend, sich der Musik zu befleissigen (from the Plöner Musiktage, 1932), and Ite angeli veloces for alto and tenor, mixed chorus, and orchestra, with audience participation (1953–55). Of Anton Webern's last three compositions, two are secular cantatas: Cantata No. 1, Op. 29 (1938–39), and Cantata No. 2, Op. 31 (1941–43), both setting texts by Hildegard Jone. Webern had begun sketching a Third Cantata by the time he was killed in 1945. Ernst Krenek also composed two examples: a "scenic cantata", Die Zwingburg, Op. 14 (1922), and a Cantata for Wartime, Op. 95, for women's voices and orchestra (1943). Sergei Prokofiev composed Semero ikh (1917–18; rev. 1933), and in 1939 premiered a cantata drawn from the film music for Alexander Nevsky. He wrote two festival cantatas, the Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Op. 74, and Flourish, Mighty Homeland, Op. 114, for the thirtieth anniversary of the same event
Patriotic cantatas celebrating anniversaries of events in the Revolution or extolling state leaders were frequently commissioned in the Soviet Union between 1930 and the middle of the century, though these occasional works were seldom among their composers' best. Examples include Dmitri Shostakovich's Poem of the Motherland, Op. 47 (1947) and The Sun Shines over Our Motherland, Op. 90 (1952), and three works by Prokofiev, Zdravitsa! Hail (1939). Dmitry Kabalevsky also composed four such cantatas, The Great Homeland, Op. 35 (1941–42), The Song of Morning, Spring and Peace, Op. 57 (1957–58), Leninists, Op. 63 (1959), and About Our Native Land, Op. 82 (1965).
Patriotic cantatas were also created in China during the civil war and the Second Sino-Japanese War. For example, the Yellow River Cantata was composed in 1939.
In 1940, the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos created a secular cantata titled Mandu çarará, based on an Indian legend collected by Barbosa Rodrigues. Francis Poulenc composed in 1943 Figure humaine, FP 120, a cantata for double mixed choir of 12 voices on poems by Paul Éluard. Igor Stravinsky composed a work titled simply Cantata in 1951–52, which used stanzas from the 15th-century "Lyke-wake Dirge" as a narrative frame for other anonymous English lyrics, and later designated A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer (1961) as "a cantata for alto and tenor soli, speaker, chorus, and orchestra". Luigi Nono wrote Il canto sospeso in 1955–56. Hans Werner Henze composed a Cantata della fiaba estrema and Novae de infinito laudes (both in 1963), as well as a number of other works that might be regarded as cantatas, such as Kammermusik (1958, rev. 1963), Muzen Siziliens (1966), and El Cimarrón (1969–70). Momente (1962–64/1969), one of the most important works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, is often described as a cantata. Benjamin Britten composed at least six works he designated as cantatas: The Company of Heaven (1937), Rejoice in the Lamb, Op. 30 (1943), Saint Nicolas, Op. 42 (1949), the Cantata academica, Op. 62 (1959), the Cantata Misericordium, Op. 69 (1963), and Phaedra, Op. 93 (1975). Alberto Ginastera also composed three works in this form: the Cantata para América Mágica, Op. 27 (1960), Bomarzo, Op. 32 (1964), and Milena, Op. 37 (1971), and Gottfried von Einem composed in 1973 An die Nachgeborenen based on diverse texts, the title taken from a poem of Bertolt Brecht. Mikis Theodorakis composed the cantatas According to the Sadducees and Canto Olympico. Herbert Blendinger's Media in vita was premiered in 1980, his Mich ruft zuweilen eine Stille (Sometimes a silence calls me) in (1992), and Allein den Betern kann es noch gelingen (It can only be achieved by those who pray) in 1995. Iván Erőd wrote in 1988/89) Vox Lucis (Voice of the Light), Op. 56. Ivan Moody wrote in 1995 Revelation.
Cantatas were also composed by Mark Alburger, Erik Bergman, Dave Brubeck, Carlos Chávez, Osvald Chlubna, Peter Maxwell Davies, Norman Dello Joio, Lukas Foss, Roy Harris, Arthur Honegger, Alan Hovhaness, Dmitry Kabalevsky, Libby Larsen, Jón Leifs, Peter Mennin, Dimitri Nicolau, Krzysztof Penderecki, Allan Pettersson, Daniel Pinkham, Earl Robinson, Ned Rorem, William Schuman ( A Free Song), Roger Sessions, Siegfried Strohbach, Michael Tippett, Kurt Weill, Jörg Widmann ( Friedenskantate, Cantata in tempore belli) and ( Christmas Cantata).
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