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As an epic musical genre by definition, the French Baroque cantata compensates for the lack of the visual stimulus so typical of spectacular genres like the opera, by highlighting the dramatic element with the help of exclusively sonorous means. The identification and contextualization of this element focuses on three fundamental aspects: highlighting the micro- and macro-form features as engine of the dramatic discourse, the text-music relationship and the exploitation of instrumental timbrality and of instrumentality in general as a discourse factor carrying the dramatic effect, in correlation with the solo voice. The process will be pursued in four French Baroque cantatas built on the theme of the Orpheus myth, by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Louis‑Nicolas Clérambault, Philippe Courbois and Jean‑Philippe Rameau.

Keywords: Orpheus, French Baroque cantata, non-spectacular genre, dramatic, instrumental.

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