Music. [It. or Lat.: see next.]
a. The plain-song or canto-fermo in old church music; the melody or ‘air’ in any composition, now usually the highest part. b. A ballad.
1789. Burney, Hist. Mus., III. ii. 165. The cantilena, or principal melody, was not given, as it is by modern composers, to the soprano, or highest part.
1867. Macfarren, Harmony, I. 20. The people may be said to make their cantilenas in the very act of singing them.
