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Baroque music

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Baroque music, from the Baroque period of Western Classical Music, was composed roughly from the time of Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) to that of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Among the great composers of the early Baroque were Monteverdi, Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713), and Henry Purcell (1659 - 1695). In the later Baroque, the leading figures included Bach, George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) and Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). Baroque music forms a major portion of the classical music canon and is widely performed and enjoyed.

It is not easy to characterize the style of Baroque music as a whole, but it may be helpful to distinguish it from both the preceding (Renaissance) and following (Classical) periods of musical history.

Baroque music shares with Renaissance music a heavy use of polyphony and counterpoint. It probably strives, in general, for a greater level of emotional intensity than Renaissance music, and a Baroque piece often uniformly depicts some particular emotion (exultation, grief, piety, etc.). Baroque music was more often written for virtuoso singers and instrumentalists, and is characteristically harder to perform than Renaissance music. Baroque music employs a great deal of ornamentation, which was often improvised by the performer. Instruments came to play a greater part in Baroque music, and a capella vocal music receded in importance.

In Classical music, which followed the Baroque, the role of counterpoint was diminished (albeit repeatedly rediscovered and reintroduced), and replaced by a homophonic texture. The role of ornamentation lessened. Works tended towards a more articulated internal structure, especially those written in sonata form. Modulation (changing of keys) became a structural and dramatic element, so that a work could be heard as a kind of dramatic journey through a sequence of musical keys, outward and back from the tonic. Baroque music also modulates frequently, but the modulation has less structural importance. Works in the classical style often depict widely varying emotions within a single movement, whereas Baroque works tend toward a single, vividly portrayed feeling. Lastly, Classical works usually reach a kind of dramatic climax and then resolve it; Baroque works retain an often intense level of dramatic energy to the very last note.

Baroque composers wrote in many different musical genres. Opera, invented in the late Renaissance, became an important musical form during the Baroque, with the operas of Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725), Handel, and others. Composers wrote instrumental sonatas and dance suites, both for chamber groups and for (small) orchestra). The concerto emerged, both in its form for a single soloist plus orchestra and as the concerto grosso, in which a small group of soloists is contrasted with the full ensemble. The French overture, with its contrasting slow and fast sections, added grandeur to the many courts at which it was performed. In religious music, the mass and motet receded slightly in importance, but the flourished in the work of Bach and other Protestant composers, and the oratorio achieved its peak in the work of Bach and Handel. Virtuoso organ music flourished, with s, fugues, and other works.

Keyboard works were sometimes written largely for the pleasure and instruction of the performer. These included a series of works by the mature Bach that are widely considered to be the intellectual culmination of the Baroque era: the Well-Tempered Clavier, the Goldberg Variations, and The Art of Fugue.

Important Features of Baroque music:

  • basso continuo - new music notation system for bass parts
  • Monody - music for one voice without accompaniment
  • Homophony - only one independent musical party
  • text over music - intelligible text with humble (not overpowering) instrumental accompaniment
  • vocal soloists ('bel canto')
  • dramatic musical expression
  • new instrumental techniques, like tremolo and pizzicato
  • new musical forms like opera, drama per musica
  • clear and linear melody
  • the aria
  • the ritornello aria (repeted short instrumental interruptions of vocal passages)
  • virtuosity
  • the 'stile concertato' (contrast in sound between orchestra and solo-instruments or small groups of instruments
  • better use of properties of each type of musical instrument
  • ornamentation
  • development to modern Western tonality (major and minor scales)

Forms of Baroque music include:

Baroque composers include, in chronological order:

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