cantata
Americannoun
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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:
The confluence of Day’s songs, Herrmann’s score and Benjamin’s cantata demolished the cliché of cinema music needing to stay in the background.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026
Hitchcock gave Herrmann the choice of writing a new cantata, but Herrmann realized that nothing could outdo “Storm Clouds.”
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
This Sunday, the Los Angeles Master Chorale will fill the sails of Walt Disney Concert Hall with that stormy, earwormy cantata by Carl Orff: “Carmina Burana.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2025
He waited, and to keep himself amused, he hummed snatches of his favorite cantata and imagined how he would narrate his adventures.
From "Abel's Island" by William Steig
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
Bach’s cantatas were limited by the forces available to him in a given week.
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 bête noire was the widespread notion that Beethoven symphonies and Bach cantatas could be divorced from their historical contexts.
From New York Times ● Jul. 1, 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.
