In music, ''cantabile'' , an
Italian word, means literally "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 made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production ...
.
For 18th-century composers, ''cantabile'' is often synonymous with "cantando" (singing) and indicates a measured
tempo and flexible,
legato playing. For later composers, particularly in
piano music, ''cantabile'' is the drawing out of one particular musical line against the accompaniment (compare
counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...
).
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (3 February 18094 November 1847), born and widely known as Felix Mendelssohn, was a German composer, pianist, organist and conductor of the early Romantic period. Mendelssohn's compositions include sy ...
'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 by
Harry James & His Orchestra, called "Trumpet Blues and Cantabile".
A cantabile movement, or simply a "cantabile", is the first half of a double
aria, followed by a
cabaletta. The cantabile
movement
Movement may refer to:
Common uses
* Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece
* Motion, commonly referred to as movement
Arts, entertainment, and media
Literature
* "Movement" (short story), a short story by Nancy Fu ...
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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