cantata

Cantata entered musical language in Italy in the early 1600s. The word is the feminine past participle of Italian cantare, "to sing," from Latin cantare. In Rome and Venice, the label marked a piece meant to be sung, in contrast with a sonata, which was meant to be played. The distinction was plain and practical at first.

By the mid-17th century, composers such as Luigi Rossi and Giacomo Carissimi were writing cantatas for solo voice and continuo. These works were usually chamber pieces, not operas, and they moved through recitative and aria. The name told listeners what kind of performance to expect. It was a sung composition with shaped text and musical turns.

In the early 18th century, the word took on wider weight in German lands. Johann Sebastian Bach used the cantata for Lutheran church works in Leipzig in the 1720s and 1730s. There the form grew larger, with chorus, soloists, and instruments, yet the old name remained. The word kept its tie to singing even as the scale changed.

English borrowed cantata by the 18th century and kept the Italian form almost untouched. The modern term can refer to sacred or secular vocal works, short or large, concert pieces or liturgical ones. Its history still preserves the old contrast with sonata. Cantata has always carried the idea of music voiced aloud.