The first use of the word cantata was by an Italian composer, Alessandro Grandi, in his "Cantatas and Arias for Solo Voice," published 1620 to 1629. These early cantatas, primarily secular in nature, were written by Italian composers, according to Britannica.com.
Both the secular "cantata da camera," or chamber cantatas, and the sacred "cantata de chiesa," or church cantatas, were sung in the vernacular language of Italian, and gradually took on the characteristics of recitative and aria found in opera today.
Other composers, most notably George Frideric Handel, adopted the Italian cantata style, but the texts were sung in German. German protestant minsters, particularly Erdmann Neumeister (1671 to 1756), led a movement to bring secular music into worship services; Neumeister's cantata texts transformed church music.
In Leipzig in 1723 to 1725, Johann Sebastian Bach developed the chorale cantata, which combined hymns with solo recitatives and arias to be sung throughout the Lutheran liturgical service. Bach also wrote secular pieces such as the Coffee Cantata and the Peasant Cantata, which are light and comic in style, according to Bach-Cantatas.com.
The term cantata eventually came to be applied to any large work for solo voice, chorus and orchestra. In the 20th century, the form was used by Benjamin Britten and other composers with an interest in older music.