ABSTRACT
With that time-lag characteristic of so many French musical borrowings from Seicento Italy, the cantate francoise emerged when its Italian counterpart had already been in existence for over half a century. It was not until 1706 that the first published French collections appeared, while the earliest surviving manuscript cantatas predate these publications by only a few years. One major factor in assessing the instrumentation of the cantate francoise is that the vast majority of these works survive in published form. The publication process was expensive, and composers stood a better chance of recouping their costs if the commercial appeal of a publication was as wide as possible. The Opera orchestra was the largest permanently established ensemble that is known to have performed cantatas. By the late 1720s the term a grande symphonie began to appear in association with cantatas scored for especially large forces.
