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Baroque Period 1600- 1750
Baroque Period • During the Renaissance, Europe had assimilated the humanism and rationalism of Greco-Roman civilization, had undergone the theological and political turmoil of religious reformation, and had, for the first time in the history of our species, begun to outline the contours of that scientific method which was to provide Europe with its technological impetus. During the era of Baroque music, European civilization emerged to a preeminence on the planet which was to endure into the twentieth century.
Baroque • This period was an age of spectacular progress of knowledge. It was the age of the scientific discoveries of Galileo and Newton, the mathematical advances of Descartes, Newton and Leibnitz, and the philosophical explorations of Descartes, Spinoza and Locke. There was a new and vibrant intellectual, artistic and social atmosphere which in so many ways signaled the birth of modern Europe.
More Baroque • Most of the Baroque musical instruments and forms which evolved during the Baroque period survive today, particularly as they were embodied in the most familiar European art music, the music of the Classical and Romantic periods of the nineteenth century.
Patrons • Baroque musicians served patrons, whether nobles, state or church. It was not until well into the eighteenth century that some musicians, like their twentieth century counterparts, began to work without patronage as independent professionals, earning a living from teaching, composing and performing.
What was this era? • Baroque music speaks to something that transcends time and place, but it also derives much from the social and cultural context of the world for which it was written. The emerging financial, commercial and professional classes created their own musical experience in the home and at church, and artistic schools flourished portraying their everyday life.
More Baroque Than Ever • The greatest number of musicians and artists flourished under the patronage of the church, the state or the aristocracy. This is the domain of such examples of Baroque expression as the luxuriant music of Vivaldi, the exuberant paintings of Peter Paul Rubens, and the flamboyant architecture of Francesco Borromini.
Baroque Craftsman • The Baroque composer thought of himself as a craftsman rather than as an artist. Unlike later European art music, a great deal of Baroque music was written on demand for specific occasions, and musical scores were often treated with the care we would accord to yesterday's newspaper. Despite this disregard for posterity by many Baroque musicians, we are still the fortunate inheritors of an enormous and magnificent body of work.
The Elements of Baroque Music • Music from the Baroque period is of many styles. There is Italian, French, English, and German Baroque music. There is early, middle and late Baroque music. There is secular and sacred Baroque music. And there are distinctive personal styles of many of the composers. One result of this diversity is a certain difficulty in defining Baroque music in terms of a large number of common elements.
Voice • The human voice is the oldest and, in some ways, the most natural of musical instruments. Of course if by "musical instrument" we meant "tool for music making", the voice would not be an instrument at all. But the singing voice of Baroque singers was not the natural untutored voice. Rather it was highly trained, and trained for a musical sound which is in many ways quite different from that which today's opera singers seek. Instead of the uniformity of tone color for which today's voice strives across the vocal range, the Baroque voice accentuated the difference in tone color between the lower and higher registers. Generally, the qualities most valued in the Baroque voice were agility, purity and clarity, even at the expense of the power which characterizes today's operatic voice.
Strings • The principal ensemble instruments in Baroque music, as in all subsequent European art music, are the unfretted (that is, without frets), bowed, string instruments of the violin family. Violin making reached its highest point during the Baroque period. Indeed, the best violins in the world today were made then in Cremona, a town in the Po River valley of northern Italy. The names of Cremona's great violin-making families, such as the Stradivari and Guarneri, are familiar today because their instruments continue to be the most prized by our greatest violinists. (Note, for example, that the Dutch Baroque virtuoso, Jaap Schroeder, plays a violin made in 1709 by Antonio Stradivarius) All the modern members of the violin family were available to Baroque composers, that is, the violin, viola, cello and double bass. Baroque composers responded to the new refined instruments with music that demanded great virtuosic and expressive skill.
Woodwinds • The recorder, oboe, and bassoon were common instruments during the Baroque era. The recorder was the only one of these instruments which did not survive the transition to the Classical period. Baroque woodwinds were all made of wood, even the flute, and had few or no keys, unlike their nineteenth century descendants. These instruments generally have a softer sound than their modern counterparts.
Brass • The main brass instruments of the Baroque era were the trumpet and french horn. Although the examples above are performed on 20th century instruments, these instruments in the Baroque period were known as "natural" trumpets and horns because they had no valves. Valves, a nineteenth century invention which increased the number of pitches easily available to the player, caused a revolution in the music that could be performed by trumpets and horns. Because of their technical limitations in the Baroque period, these instruments were used essentially for orchestral color.
Keyboard/Plucked • The two principal keyboard instruments of the Baroque era, the harpsichord, a plucked keyboard instrument, and the organ, are associated, respectively, with secular and sacred music. Harpsichord construction and composition reached its zenith during this period. Prized both as a solo and accompanying instrument, the harpsichord flourished throughout Europe. The lute, like the harpsichord, was used as a solo and accompanying instrument and enjoyed four centuries of favor, from the later Middle Ages until the end of the 17th century. Although a primitive piano was invented during the Baroque period, it remained a curiosity until the middle of the eighteenth century. The Classical period's Haydn and Mozart were the first great composers to write for the piano.
The Baroque Orchestra • The orchestra settled into a recognizable entity of instrumentalists in the 18th century. It was much smaller in scale than the modern orchestra and generally the musical scores were adjusted to accommodate the number of players available. They were mainly, and sometimes exclusively, composed of string players. Woodwinds usually played the same notes as the strings, but occasionally the woodwinds and brass were given short passages for color contrast.
Stylistic Elements of Baroque Music • The two most universal stylistic elements of Baroque music are continuo, also called thorough bass, and ornamentation. Both involve the difference between what the composer wrote down and what the performer played. Both are elements of musical style which derived from Renaissance music and persisted into early Classical music.
Stylistic Elements of Baroque Music • The continuo, typically consisting of a harpsichord and a cello, provided the rhythmic and harmonic foundation of Baroque ensemble. It was usually written as a bass line with numbers under each note to designate the harmony, much like a modern jazz chart, and the performers decided how to fill out this "figured bass".
Stylistic Elements of Baroque Music • Ornamentation is the embellishment of the musical line, with devices such as trills, mordants and grace notes. Ornaments were rarely written out, and often were not even indicated, but simply left to the taste of the performer. Vibrato was considered an ornamental enhancement of a given note or musical moment, not the ubiquitous element of tone production which it has become today.
