Cantata

Cantata. A composite vocal-instrumental work for choir, soloists, and orchestra, usually of a solemn or lyric-epic character. In Ukrainian music the model for the cantata was set by Mykola Lysenko with pieces such as ‘Rejoice, Unwatered Field,' ‘The Rapids Pound', and ‘In Eternal Memory of Kotliarevsky.' Other composers who wrote cantatas were Kyrylo Stetsenko (‘On Sunday, Holy Sunday'), Stanyslav Liudkevych (‘Caucasus,' 1902–13, ‘Testament,' 1934), Lev Revutsky (‘The Kerchief,' 1923), Mykhailo Verykivsky (‘October Cantata,' 1936), Borys Liatoshynsky (‘Ceremonial Cantata,' 1939), Ihor Shamo (‘Duma about Three Winds'), Andrii Shtoharenko (‘My Ukraine,' 1943), Antin Rudnytsky (‘Moses'), Lev Kolodub (‘Glory to the Fatherland'), Roman Simovych (‘Flower of Happiness and Freedom'), Myroslav Skoryk (‘Spring,' ‘A Person'), Anatol Kos-Anatolsky (‘It Passed Long Ago,' 1961), Yakiv Tsehliar (‘To the Immortal Kobzar'), Vitalii Kyreiko (‘In Memory of M.L. Kropyvnytsky'), and Lesia Dychko (‘Red Guelder Rose'). The cantata became particularly popular in Soviet music as a medium for the glorification of the socialist epoch.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]