cantata
Americannoun
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cantatas
plural
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a choral composition, either sacred and resembling a short oratorio or secular, as a lyric drama set to music but not to be acted.
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a metrical narrative set to recitative or alternate recitative and air, usually for a single voice accompanied by one or more instruments.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of cantata
1715–25; < Italian, equivalent to cant ( are ) to sing ( see cant 1) + -ata -ate 1
Explanation
If you ever listen to classical music, you’ve probably heard a cantata — a piece of religious music made for voices and instruments. Johann Sebastian Bach was a famous composer of cantatas. He wrote hundreds, and you’ve probably heard them played at weddings, in a church, at a party thrown by a king (or in car commercials). The word comes from the Italian cantare, which means “sing,” and the singers are the focus of a cantata — whether it’s one person or a whole choir. Cantatas are often based on religious writing, but can be inspired by poetry and literature as well.
Vocabulary lists containing cantata
Ordinary Hazards
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Blended
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Abel's Island
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Perhaps most important of all, so are its forms: the symphony, the string quartet, the cantata, etc.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
Without a break, Dudamel began Estévez’s complex cantata, which he conducted from memory, with a searing fury that did not let up for 35 minutes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2026
In the original, from 1934, Hitchcock united a cantata by one of his favorite composers, Arthur Benjamin, with the climax of a kidnap-assassination plot in a dramatic blending of action and music.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026
In 2004, a Bach cantata that had been lost for decades was rediscovered in the papers of Japanese pianist Chieko Hara.
From Barron's ● Nov. 17, 2025
In 1943, she and the school’s music teacher, Altona Johns, put students through their paces in preparation for the year’s Christmas cantata, “The Light Still Shines.”
From "Hidden Figures" by Margot Lee Shetterly
Barely into his 20s, he formed his first ensemble in his home town in 1954, and it was with this group, the Gächinger Kantorei, and the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart that he took on the complete cantatas.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 24, 2026
Most of them call for soloists and a four-part choir, but he wrote solo cantatas as well as duos.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 24, 2026
The baritone Roderick Williams joined them for cantatas by Bach and Telemann.
From New York Times ● Feb. 13, 2023
His sacred cantatas and passions, and none more so than the “St. Matthew Passion,” include some of the most profound drama by this most profound of composers.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 19, 2022
Nothing could be further from the omnipotent, benevolent creative force of Handel’s oratorios or Bach’s cantatas and Passions - yet Handel was still alive, just, and Bach had only died five years earlier.
From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
