Cantata

A cantata is a vocal composition with instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements for soloists, choir or both, on a sacred or secular text. The form crystallised in early-seventeenth-century Italy with *Claudio Monteverdi* and *Barbara Strozzi* and reached its most systematic use in Lutheran Germany, where *Johann Sebastian Bach* produced cycles of church cantatas for the liturgical year, among them the early "Actus Tragicus". *Dietrich Buxtehude*'s "Membra Jesu Nostri" joined the cantata to devotional meditation. Secular cantatas range from *George Frideric Handel*'s Italian works to *Sergei Prokofiev*'s "Alexander Nevsky" and *Carl Orff*'s "Carmina Burana".