Cantabile is a term in music meaning to perform in a singing style. The word is taken from the
Italian language
Italian (, , or , ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. It evolved from the colloquial Latin of the Roman Empire. Italian is the least divergent language from Latin, together with Sardinian language, Sardinian. It is ...
and literally means "singable" or "songlike".
In instrumental music, it is a particular style of playing designed to imitate the
human voice
The human voice consists of sound Voice production, made by a human being using the vocal tract, including Speech, talking, singing, Laughter, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically ...
. The German-language equivalent to cantabile is gesangvoll.
For 18th-century composers, ''cantabile'' is often synonymous with "cantando" (singing) and indicates a measured
tempo
In musical terminology, tempo (Italian for 'time'; plural 'tempos', or from the Italian plural), measured in beats per minute, is the speed or pace of a given musical composition, composition, and is often also an indication of the composition ...
and flexible,
legato playing. For later composers, particularly in
piano
A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...
music, ''cantabile'' is the drawing out of one particular musical line against the accompaniment (compare
counterpoint).
Felix Mendelssohn's six books of ''
Songs Without Words'' are short lyrical piano pieces with song-like melodies written between 1829 and 1845. A modern example is an instrumental piece by
Harry James
Harry Haag James (March 15, 1916 – July 5, 1983) was an American musician who is best known as a trumpet-playing band leader who led a big band to great commercial success from 1939 to 1946. He broke up his band for a short period in 1947, but ...
& His Orchestra, called "Trumpet Blues and Cantabile".
A cantabile movement, or simply a "cantabile", is the first half of a double
aria
In music, an aria (, ; : , ; ''arias'' in common usage; diminutive form: arietta, ; : ariette; in English simply air (music), air) is a self-contained piece for one voice, with or without instrument (music), instrumental or orchestral accompan ...
, followed by a
cabaletta. The cantabile
movement would be slower and more free-form to contrast with the structured and generally faster cabaletta.
Louis Spohr subtitled his violin concerto No. 8 ''"in moda d'una scena cantata,"'' "in the manner of a sung
peraticscene"; opera arias exerted a strong influence on the "singable" ''cantabile'' melodic line in
Romantic writing for stringed instruments.
References
*Kennedy, Michael, ''The Oxford Dictionary of Music'', Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 123.
*Milsom, David
''Theory and Practice in Late Nineteenth-century Violin Performance'' Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2003, p. 113.
*Warrack, John and West, Ewan, ''The Oxford Dictionary of Opera'', Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 115.
{{opera terms
Italian opera terminology
Classical music styles
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