Cantates by Alessandro Scarlatti

Alessandro Scarlatti

Alessandro Scarlatti, father of the famous harpsichordist and composer Domenico Scarlatti, was very popular in his time. He received commissions from Rome, Venice and Florence and was important to Neapolitan opera. Much of his work has been lost, but his name is almost synonymous with the Italian cantata because of the more than 600 cantatas he wrote.

19.00 / Early music lecture by Jan Van den Bossche (in Dutch)

The Italian cantata

When we hear the word 'cantata', we quickly think of Bach's compositions for the weekly church service. But Johann Sebastian Bach rarely used the term. The cantata is of Italian origin and is usually written for one or two vocal soloists and a small instrumental ensemble. From a relatively modest beginning, the cantata grew into one of the defining genres of the Italian vocal baroque, alongside the opera and the oratorio. This lecture tells about the history and first heyday of the cantata in Baroque Rome, where various rich and powerful families alternated at the Holy See and at the same time competed with each other in the artistic field.