WHAT IS BAROQUE MUSIC?
The Baroque style sprawled over all artistic endeavour for roughly two centuries, the 17th and 18th. It used contrast, exuberant detail, grandeur, complexity, excess, and surprise to achieve a sense of awe aimed to impress, giving us some of our greatest art. Beginning around 1600 in Italy, it spread across Europe.
It was started by the Catholic church in Rome as a tool for the Counter-reformation, which was losing ground to Lutheranism. The Church had always believed in art. It relied on it. It knew that people liked to see what they’re worshipping. They liked images, and that gave art tremendous power. Western music as we know it today, started with the Baroque in Italy, which gave music its language—allegro, crescendo, legato—and its main forms—sonata, cantata, opera, and concerto.
ASPECTS OF THE BAROQUE
The word, Baroque, is French from the Portugese “barroco”, meaning a misshapen pearl, something strange or bizarre, was first used in the 19th century.
Contrast – Contrast, with its shock and surprise can be seen in different styles, old and new, large group and small group, loud and soft, homophony (one main tune) and polyphony (many simultaneous melodies and the art of combining them called counterpoint), soloist and ensemble, jovial and melancholy, major and minor.
Individuality – Of importance was the emergence of the soloist and a culture of virtuosity. In the Renaissance, people played together on equal terms as part of a balanced polyphony—think Byrd and Palestrina. Not so in the Baroque, where soloists were revered and paid great sums of money to show off their blazing skill.
Major, Minor & Modulation – These replaced the ancient scheme of modes where music stayed put for the length of the piece, thereby hampering the desire for an extended form because they became boring if the music went on too long. The new system of Major and Minor was a godsend. Now you could write a 3-part form with a section in major, contrast it in minor and follow that with a reprise of the first section in major again. The Da Capo aria in opera and oratorio also gave the soloist the opportunity for dazzling ornamentation in the return of the first section.
Rule of Words – In the Baroque, words were more important than the music, which was a vehicle for the words, making the new forms of opera, cantata, and oratorio wildly popular.
Mood / Affect – Baroque music was often designed to evoke a specific mood or emotion. Musical devices, such as fast or slow tempos, major or minor keys, dissonance or consonance, and particular intervals or patterns to elicit a certain emotional response in the listener.
Texture – Music featured a complex texture, with multiple voices or instruments simultaneously playing different melodies, creating a rich and intense sound unique to the Baroque era.
Ornamentation – Ornate melodies were written to showcase a performer’s virtuosity, ornamented with trills and turns, giving the music a more expressive, emotional, and complex sound.
Dynamics – Baroque dyamics were not gradual, but involved sudden changes in volume called terraced dynamics. Especially in orchestral music, different orchestra sections alternated between loud and soft passages, creating a dramatic effect.
FULL FLOWER—the HIGH BAROQUE
Around 1700, thanks to affordable printing, the creative genius of earlier musicians, and masses of money flooding in from the New World, composers had a greater range of possibilities than ever before. Bach and Handel absorbed all the national styles and reinvented them to create music that was uniquely different and utterly international.
England’s place in this was by creating Europe’s first public concerts and concert halls. London’s opera houses were equipped with first class orchestras and an international swarm of bad-tempered divas and star castrati.
Soon after 1700, Baroque music fused into a dazzling delight of satisfying harmony and counterpoint and achievements that may have been equaled, but have never been surpassed.