Cantata During The Baroque Period

During the Baroque period, some important choral forms such as the motet represented the continued development of the Renaissance ideas. However, others such as the cantata and the oratorio were completely new creations of the time period. These vocal forms of the Baroque period were based on the monadic style. In some cases, some of these forms like the cantata crossed over boundaries of sacred and secular and were used for both. Specifically, the cantata was one of the most prominent composition forms of the baroque period and it originated in Italy. The word “cantata” comes from Italian word “cantare” meaning “to sing” (Schulenberg 82). It developed as an extended piece of accompanied secular music and was composed for solo voice and basso continue. It consisted of a succession of recitatives and set pieces such as arias, duets and choruses and was intended for performance at private social gatherings (Anderson 195). Eventually the Lutheran Church started to implement …show more content…
In this sense the cantata replaced the sacred concerto in many early eighteenth century churches. Lutheran cantatas were different from sacred concertos in that they consisted of several distinct movements usually conceded by passages of recitative and were usually always in German (Hill 454). The cantata did not tell a story nor did it literally draw text from Biblical sources like the sacred concerto, instead each movement reflected upon some aspect of the religious sentiment or holiday at hand. Bach was one of the largest composers of cantatas and his best known cantata was “Awake, A voice is Calling Us” (Anderson 196). In addition to the cantata and other compositions forms for vocals, there were also