ABSTRACT
Scarlatti outdid his contemporaries by the sheer quantity of his compositions in the genre of the chamber cantata. Even though quantity does not necessarily translate into quality, importance or historical significance, there is general agreement that the genre of the cantata da camera reaches a peak in the work of Scarlatti: quantity is just an external indicator of this fact. In relation to Alessandro Scarlatti's cantatas, research has up to now concentrated on the development of their form, some peculiarities of the composer's style, the chronology of the works, certain sub-groups within them and some selected sources. Paglia was a respected member of Roman literary circles of the late 1680s and early 1690s. The new literary trends in the 1690s are epitomized in the Roman Arcadia, whose goal was the renewal of Italian poetry and literary genres through purification of the poetic language.
