Musopen: Music History: Baroque

Baroque music

Baroque music describes an era and a set of styles of European classical music which were in widespread use between approximately 1600 to 1750 (see Dates of classical music eras for a discussion of the problems inherent in defining the beginning and end points). This era is said to begin in music after the Renaissance and to be followed by the Classical music era.

The original meaning of "baroque" is "irregularly shaped pearl", a strikingly fitting characterization of the architecture and design of this period; later, the name came to be applied also to its music. Baroque music forms a major portion of the classical music canon. It is widely performed, studied and listened to. It is associated with composers such as J.S. Bach, George Friedrich Händel, Antonio Vivaldi, and Claudio Monteverdi. During the period, music theory, diatonic tonality, and imitative counterpoint developed. More elaborate musical ornamentation, as well as changes in musical notation and advances in the way instruments were played also appeared. Baroque music would see an expansion in the size, range and complexity of performance, as well as the establishment of opera as a type of musical performance. Many musical terms and concepts from this era are still currently in use.

Style and trends
Music conventionally described as Baroque encompasses a wide range of styles from a wide geographic region, mostly in Europe, composed during a period of approximately 150 years. The term "Baroque", as applied to this period in music is a relatively recent development, first being used by Curt Sachs in 1919, and only acquiring currency in English in the 1940s. Indeed, as late as 1960 there was still considerable dispute in academic circles whether it was meaningful to lump together music as diverse as that of Jacopo Peri, Domenico Scarlatti and J.S. Bach with a single term; yet the term has become widely used and accepted for this broad range of music.

Baroque versus Renaissance style
Baroque music shares with Renaissance music a heavy use of polyphony and counterpoint. However, its use of these techniques differs from Renaissance music. In the Renaissance, harmony is more the result of consonances incidental to the smooth flow of polyphony, while in the early Baroque era the order of these consonances becomes important, for they begin to be felt as chords in a hierarchical, functional tonal scheme. Around 1600 there is considerable blurring of this definition: for example one can see essentially tonal progressions around cadential points in madrigals, while in early monody the feeling of tonality is still rather tenuous.

Baroque versus Classical style
In the Classical era, which followed the Baroque, the role of counterpoint was diminished (albeit repeatedly rediscovered and reintroduced; see fugue), 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 a fairly constant level of dramatic energy to the very last note. Many forms of the Baroque would serve as the point of departure for the creation of the sonata form, by creating a "floor plan" for the placement of important cadences.

Important features
    * basso continuo - a kind of continuous accompaniment notated with a new music notation system, figured bass, usually for a sustaining bass instrument and a keyboard instrument
    * monody - music for one melodic voice with accompaniment, characteristic of the early 17th century, especially in Italy
    * homophony - music with one melodic voice and rhythmically similar accompaniment (this and monody are contrasted with the typical Renaissance texture, polyphony)
    * text over music - intelligible text with instrumental accompaniment not written notes
    * the aria
    * the ritornello aria (repeated short instrumental interruptions of vocal passages)
    * the concertato style (contrast in sound between orchestra and solo-instruments or small groups of instruments)
    * precise instrumental scoring (in the Renaissance, exact instrumentation for ensemble playing was rarely indicated)
    * idiomatic instrumental writing: better use of the unique properties of each type of musical instrument
    * virtuosic instrumental and vocal writing, with appreciation for virtuosity as such
    * ornamentation
    * development to modern Western tonality (major and minor scales)

Early Baroque music (1600–1654)
The conventional dividing line for the Baroque from the Renaissance begins in Italy, with the composer Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643), with his creation of a recitative style, and the rise of a form of musical drama called opera. This was part of a self-conscious change in style that was across the arts, most particularly architecture and painting.

Musically the adoption of the figured bass represents a larger change in musical thinking—namely that harmony, that is "taking all of the parts together" was as important as the linear part of polyphony. Increasingly polyphony and harmony would be seen as two sides of the same idea, with harmonic progressions entering the notion of composing, as well as the use of the tritone as a dissonance.

The demands of religion were also to make the text of sacred works clearer, and hence there was pressure to move away from the densely layered polyphony of the Renaissance, to lines which put the words front and center, or had a more limited range of imitation. This would create the demand for a more intricate weaving of the vocal line against backdrop, or homophony.

Late Baroque music (1707–1760)
Leading figures of the late Baroque include J.S. Bach (1685–1750), George Frideric Handel (1685–1759), Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767), Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757), Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) and Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764).

Transition to the Classical era (1740–1780)
The phase between the late Baroque and the early Classical era, with its broad mixture of competing ideas and attempts to unify the different demands of taste, economics and "worldview", goes by many names. It is sometimes called "Galant", "Rococo", or "pre-Classical", or at other times, "early Classical". It is a period where composers still working in the Baroque style are still successful, if sometimes thought of as being more of the past than the present—Bach, Handel and Telemann all compose well beyond the point at which the homophonic style is clearly in the ascendant. Musical culture was caught at a crossroads: the masters of the older style had the technique, but the public hungered for the new. This is one of the reasons C.P.E. Bach was held in such high regard: he understood the older forms quite well, and knew how to present them in new garb, with an enhanced variety of form; he went far in overhauling the older forms from the Baroque.