duets and trios are examples on a rather large
scale. His Latin motet _Silete Venti_, for soprano solo, shows the use
of this form in church music.

The Italian solo cantata naturally tended, when on a large scale, to
become indistinguishable from a scene in an opera. In the same way the
church cantata, solo or choral, is indistinguishable from a small
oratorio or portion of an oratorio. This is equally evident whether we
examine the unparalleled church cantatas of Bach, of which nearly 200
are extant, or the _Chandos Anthems_ of Handel. In Bach's case many of
the larger cantatas are actually called oratorios; and the _Christmas
Oratorio_ is a collection of six church cantatas actually intended for
performance on six different days, though together forming as complete
an artistic whole as any classical oratorio.

The essential point, however, in Bach's church cantatas is that they
formed part of a church service, and moreover of a service in which the
organization of the music was far more coherent than is possible in the
Anglican church. Many of Bach's greatest cantatas begin with an
elaborate chorus followed by a couple of arias and recitatives, and end
with a plain chorale. This has often been commented upon as an example
of Bach's indifference to artistic climax in the work as a whole. But no
one will maintain this who realizes the place which the church cantata
occupied in the Lutheran church service. The text was carefully based
upon the gospel or lessons for the day; unless the cantata was short the
sermon probably took place after the first chorus or one of the arias,
and the congregation joined in the final chorale. Thus the unity of the
service was the unity of the music; and, in the cases where all the
movements of the cantata were founded on one and the same chorale-tune,
this unity has never been equalled, except by those 16th-century masses
and motets which are founded upon the Gregorian tones of the festival
for which they are written.

In modern times the term cantata is applied almost exclusively to
choral, as distinguished from solo vocal music. There has, perhaps, been
only one kind of cantata since Bach which can be recognized as an art
form and not as a mere title for works otherwise impossible to classify.
It is just possible to recognize as a distinct artistic type that kind
of early 19th-century cantata in which the chorus is the vehicle for
music more lyric and songlike than the oratorio styl