CANTATA (Italian for a song or story set to music), a vocal composition accompanied by instruments and generally contain ing more than one movement. In the i6th century, when all serious music was vocal, the term had no reason to exist, but with the rise of instrumental music in the i 7th century cantatas began to exist under that name as soon as the instrumental art was definite enough to be embodied in sonatas. From the middle of the till late in the i8th century a favourite 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 Carissimi; and the English vocal solos of 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. Handel's numerous Italian duets and trios are examples on a rather large scale. His Latin motet Silete V enti, for soprano solo, shows the use of this form in church music.
The Italian solo cantata soon became indistinguishable from a scene in an opera. In the same way the church cantata, solo or choral, is indistinguishable from a small oratorio. This is equally evident in the 200 church cantatas of Bach or in the Chandos anthems of Handel. Many of Bach's larger cantatas are actually called oratorios; and the Christmas Oratorio is a collection of six church cantatas originally intended for performance on six different days, though together forming as complete an artistic whole as any classical oratorio.
Bach's church cantatas formed part of a church service, well organized for a coherent musical scheme. 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. Such a scheme is pointless in the concert-room, but it is magnificently appropriate to the Lutheran Church service. The text was 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 finale 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 i6th 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 also used as equivalent to "secular oratorio." It is 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 song-like 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. Beethoven's Glorreiche Augenblick is a brilliant "pot-boiler" in this style; Weber's Jubel Cantata is a typical specimen, and Mendelssohn's Walpurgisnacht is the locus classicus. Mendelssohn's "symphony cantata," the Lobgesang (Hymn of Praise), is a hybrid work, partly in the ora torio 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 a triple symphonic prelude.
The full lyric possibilities of a string of choral songs were realized at last by Brahms in his Rinaldo, set to a text which Goethe wrote at the same time as he wrote that of the Walpur gisnacht. The point of Brahms's only experiment in this genre has been missed by critics who expected so voluminous a work to be on more elaborate lines. But it represents a definite art form. The remaining types of cantata (beginning with Beet hoven's Meeresstille, and including most of Brahms's and many notable English small choral works) are merely so many different ways of setting to choral music a poem which is just too long to be comprised in one movement. (D. F. T.)