Collaboration and the Italian solo cantata

Compared with opera, the solo cantata of the Italian baroque is a genre apparently born in solitary confinement. The editor’s task an equally lonely one. But decades of transcribing and performing previously unedited cantatas have enabled this researcher interaction with singers, literary scholars, editors, performer-researchers and audiences. Such collaboration mirrors the intensely social origins of the genre, involving interactions between composer, singer, poet, copyist, player and patron.