CHRISTMAS CANTATAS BY CRISTOFARO CARESANA AT THE GENRE FRONTLINE OF THE NEW TIME (SUITE, CONCERT, OPERA)

The focus of the article is the spiritual compositions of Italian composer Cristofaro Caresana, whose work expressed the fading culture of the Renaissance in the upcoming and already developing Baroque. The beauty of the soloists' ensemble singing in Caresana's music attracts listeners; in his works, there are no choirs with monumental parts, each of which could consist of ten or more choristers during his time. His music is transparent and light with the achievement of the Renaissance, namely the imitative technique. Imitations are repetitions of short melodic phrases, passing from voice to voice. In the early Renaissance, only performers of secular songs used them. However, they became the centrepiece of spiritual compositions in the late Renaissance. In addition to ensemble singing and the imitative development of musical thought, Cristofaro Caresana’s Christmas cantatas are interesting for the features of secular instrumental genres, which are considered characteristic of the Baroque era. The article could have been called differently: vocal origins of instrumental genres or spiritual origins of secular genres. The first phenomenon testifies to the fact that vocal genres were a laboratory of instrumental music. It is no coincidence that an instrumental melody was called a “textless tune” in one of the first treatises on secular music (Johannes de Grocheio, Ars musicae, 1300). The other phenomenon, the fusion of the spiritual and the secular, is manifested not only in the dramaturgy of the cantatas, but also in their content. Thus, Cristofaro Caresana’s Christmas cantatas testify to a man of the New Age, who, it seems, is moving further and further away from the truths of Christianity.