CANTAGALLO, an inland town of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, about 100 m. by rail N.E. of the port of Rio de Janeiro, with which it is connected by the Cantagallo railway. Pop. (1890) of the municipality, 26,067, of whom less than one-fourth live in the town. Cantagallo is situated in the fertile Parahyba valley and is the commercial centre of a rich coffee-producing district. There are exhausted gold placer mines in its vicinity, but they were not rich enough to cause any considerable development in mining. Coffee production is the principal industry, but sugar-cane is grown to a limited extent, and some attention is given to the raising of cattle and swine. The district is an excellent fruit region.
CANTAL, a department of central France, formed from Haute-Auvergne, the southern portion of the old province of Auvergne. It is bounded N. by the department of Puy-de-Dôme, E. by Haute-Loire, S.E. by Lozère, S. by Aveyron and Lozère, and W. by Corrèze and Lot. Area 2231 sq. m. Pop. (1906) 228,600. Cantal is situated in the middle of the central plateau of France. It takes its name from the Monts du Cantal, a volcanic group occupying its central region, and continued towards the north and east by ranges of lower altitude. The Plomb du Cantal, the culminating summit of the department, attains a height of 6096 ft.; and its neighbours, the Puy Mary and the Puy Chavaroche, attain a height of 5863 and 5722 ft. respectively. Immediately to the east of this central mass lies the lofty but fertile plateau of Planèze, which merges into the Monts de la Margeride on the eastern border. The valley of the Truyère skirts the Planèze on the south and divides it from the Monts d’Aubrac, at the foot of which lies Chaudesaigues, noted for its thermal springs, the most important in the department. Northwards the Monts du Cantal are connected with the Monts Dore by the volcanic range of Cézallier and the arid plateaus of Artense. In the west of the department grassy plateaus and beautiful river valleys slope gently down from the central heights. Most of the streams of the department have their sources in this central ridge and fall by a short and rapid course into the rivers which traverse the extensive valleys on either side. The principal rivers are the Alagnon, a tributary of the Allier; the Celle and Truyère, tributaries of the Lot; and the Cère and Rue, tributaries of the Dordogne. The climate of the department varies considerably in the different localities. In the alluvial plain between Murat and St Flour, and in the south-west in the arrondissement of Aurillac, it is generally mild and dry; but in the northern and central portions the winters are long and severe and the hurricanes peculiarly violent. The cold and damp of the climate in these districts are great obstacles to the cultivation of wheat, but rye and buckwheat are grown in considerable quantities, and in natural pasture Cantal is extremely rich. Cattle are accordingly reared with profit, especially around Salers and in the Monts d’Aubrac, while butter and Roquefort cheese are made in large quantities. Large flocks of sheep pasture in the Monts d’Aubrac and elsewhere in the department; goats are also reared. The inhabitants are simple and primitive and accustomed to live on the scantiest fare. Many of them migrate for part of the year to Paris and the provinces, where they engage in the humblest occupations. The principal articles of food are rye, buckwheat and chestnuts. The internal resources of the department are considerable; but the difficulty of land-carriage prevents them being sufficiently developed. The hills and valleys abound with game and the streams with fish. Cantal produces a vast variety of aromatic and medicinal plants; and its mineral products include coal, antimony and lime. The department has no prominent manufactures. Live-stock, cheese, butter and coal are the principal exports; coal, wine, cereals, flour and earthenware are imported. The department is served by the railways of the Orléans and Southern companies, the construction of which at some points demanded considerable engineering skill, notably in the case of the viaduct of Garabit spanning the gorge of the Truyère. Cantal is divided into four arrondissements—Aurillac, Mauriac, Murat and St Flour—23 cantons and 267 communes. It belongs to the region of the XIII. army corps and to the académie (educational division) of Clermont-Ferrand. Its bishopric is at St Flour and depends on the archbishopric of Bourges. Its court of appeal is at Riom. The capital is Aurillac (q.v.), and St Flour (q.v.) is the other principal town.
CANTARINI, SIMONE (1612-1648), called Simone da Pesaro, painter and etcher, was born at Oropezza near Pesaro in 1612. He was a disciple of Guido Reni and a fellow-student of Domenichino and Albano. The irritability of his temper and his vanity were extreme; and it is said that his death, which took place at Verona in 1648, was occasioned by chagrin at his failure in a portrait of the duke of Mantua. Others relate that he was poisoned by a Mantuan painter whom he had injured. His pictures, though masterly and spirited, are deficient in originality. Some of his works have been mistaken for examples of Guido Reni, to whom, indeed, he is by some considered superior in the extremities of the figures. Among his principal paintings are “St Anthony,” at Cagli; the “Magdalene,” at Pesaro; the “Transfiguration,” in the Brera Gallery, Milan; the “Portrait of Guido,” in the Bologna gallery; and “St Romuald,” in the Casa Paolucci. His most celebrated etching is “Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto, honouring the arms of Cardinal Borghese.”
CANTATA (Italian for a song or story set to music), a vocal composition accompanied by instruments and generally containing more than one movement. In the 16th century, when all serious music was vocal, the term had no reason to exist, but with the rise of instrumental music in the 17th century cantatas began to exist under that name as soon as the instrumental art was definite enough to be embodied in sonatas. From the middle of the 17th till late in the 18th century a favourite form of Italian chamber music was the cantata for one or two solo voices, with accompaniment of harpsichord and perhaps a few other solo instruments. It consisted at first of a declamatory narrative or scene in recitative, held together by a primitive aria repeated at intervals. Fine examples may be found in the church music of Carissimi; and the English vocal solos of Purcell (such as Mad Tom and Mad Bess) show the utmost that can be made of this archaic form. With the rise of the Da Capo aria the cantata became a group of two or three arias joined by recitative. Handel’s numerous Italian 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 style, though at the same time not excludeing the possibility of a brilliant climax in the shape of a light order of fugue. Beethoven’s Glorreiche Augenblick is a brilliant “pot-boiler” in this style; Weber’s Jubel Cantata is a typical specimen, and Mendelssohn’s Walpurgisnacht is the classic. Mendelssohn’s “Symphony Cantata,” the Lobgesang, is a hybrid work, partly in the oratorio style. It is preceded by three symphonic movements, a device avowedly suggested by Beethoven’s ninth symphony; but the analogy is not accurate, as Beethoven’s work is a symphony of which the fourth movement is a choral finale of essentially single design, whereas Mendelssohn’s “Symphony Cantata” is a cantata with three symphonic preludes. The full lyric possibilities of a string of choral songs were realized at last by Brahms in his Rinaldo, set to a text which Goethe wrote at the same time as he wrote that of the Walpurgisnacht. The point of Brahms’s work (his only experiment in this genre) has naturally been lost by critics who expected in so voluminous a composition the qualities of an elaborate choral music with which it has nothing whatever to do. Brahms has probably said the last word on this subject; and the remaining types of cantata (beginning with Beethoven’s Meeres-stille, and including most of Brahms’s and many notable English small choral works) are merely so many different ways of setting to choral music a poem which is just too long to be comprised in one movement.