The Baroque Period (c.1600-1750) - Society at the Time

After the Renaissance period came the Baroque period, with composers with names that you'd probably recognise such as Bach and Handel. In fact, Bach was such a musical giant that the Baroque period is generally said to end in 1750, the year of his death.

First of all, let's have a look at what society was like back in the Baroque period. Pretty much all European countries were still absolute monarchies, ruled by kings like Louis XIV who loved music and employed lots of musicians to write music for them. A lot of music was commissioned by nobility or by the developing middle classes which consisted of doctors and wealthy merchants. The Church was less important again (it's a trend that continues with every subsequent period) so much more music and art were secular rather than sacred. The arts, including architecture, still conformed to the whole idea of balance and symmetry, but everything became more detailed and every available space was taken up with action. The word "baroque" comes from a Portuguese word meaning "misshapen pearl" and is a reference to the architecture of the time (whether the architecture was really deserving of this description or not is up to you). More women were composing and performing, and there were also more amateur musicians too.

Secular music really began to flourish in the Baroque period. New forms were created, such as operas, oratorios, concertos, sonatas and cantatas, while keeping the old forms intact. There was also a whole array of new instruments available to play this music, including keyboard instruments such as organs, harpsichords and clavichords, the latter used mainly in the home. Other new instruments included valveless trumpets, French horns, timpani, string instruments and a few woodwind instruments- I think oboes and bassoons were invented at around this time. Instrumental music became as important as choral music in the late Baroque period, possibly due to the increased diversity of instruments. The introduction of equal temperament tuning also helped things along a little, as it allowed instruments to play in all different keys (initially you'd have to change some of the metal tubing or something of that nature to play in a different key).

Baroque music liked to be one of two things: either consistent or containing lots of contrasts. Terraced dynamics (dynamics without crescendos or decrescendos between different dynamic levels), largely due to the capabilities of the instruments, created massive dynamic contrasts. The all-new concerto form had contrasts between a small group or individual versus the whole ensemble (which was also known as tutti or ripieno). Baroque music achieved consistency through its much stronger sense of rhythm and structure, with forms such as ritornello (instrumental interludes), binary, ternary, rondo and Da Capo arias (essentially ternary form with arias). Ground bass, or ostinatos, or a repeating bass line, was also used- think Pachelbel's Canon with its repeating D, A, B, F#, G, D, G, A repeated some 52 times or somewhere around there.

Let's see... what were some other features? Well, homophony was popular in the late Renaissance and early Baroque, but by the time of the late Baroque, polyphony was still popular, and so were long drawn-out melismas. Baroque composers also liked imitation, which is where one line plays the same thing that another line just played. (Sequential imitation is like imitation, but the melody or melodic fragment is repeated at a different pitch.) Word painting was still used, and dissonance was more often in order to convey expression. Lots of ornamentation was also used, just like how buildings of the time were intricately decorated.

Now to the genres of music! Operas and oratorios were both very important forms of entertainment at the time. Opera, a form that took off thanks to the operas of Monteverdi, combined music and acting in onstage productions. They came in two varieties: opera seria (serious Italian opera) and opera buffa (comic opera), both of which used secular stories. Oratorios were sort of like operas, but no acting was involved. People didn't pretend to be the characters, they simply sang about them. Oratorios used sacred stories and were performed in the vernacular, the local language. During Lent, operas were banned, so oratorios were usually performed instead. Handel's Messiah is a very famous oratorio.

Cantatas, part of the Lutheran Church service, was a multi-movement work unified by a chorale or hymn tune. It had arias, recitatives and choruses (more on what these parts are later). It involved solo singers and choirs.

Sonatas came in two forms: sonata da chiesa (serious church sonatas) and sonata da camera (dance-like chamber sonatas).

Concertos, as mentioned before, were multi-movement works that had a small group or individual against the whole ensemble.

(I really need to find out more about cantatas, sonatas and concertos to flesh out their sections above... ah well. Apparently next year we're going to be studying concertos.)

Last but not least, there were a lot of important composers in the Baroque period. Here's a run-down for you. Once again, my knowledge is seriously lacking.

Purcell was a British composer. He wrote an opera called Dido and Aeneas which was originally written to be performed by the students of a girls' school, as well as a myriad of other works.

Scarlatti, who is one of my piano teacher's favourite composers, wrote a lot of sonatas for keyboard instruments. He was a good harpsichordist.

Vivaldi was an amazing violinist at his time. He wrote the very famous solo concerto The Four Seasons.

Pachelbel wrote his Canon in D, infamous to cello players and famous to everyone else.

Bach wrote a lot of music, mainly sacred. He was German, and he stayed in Germany all his life. He was an organist and composer, but in his time he was known mainly for his organ playing. His works included the Brandenburg Concertos; a cantata known as Sleepers, Awake (Watchet Auf), which was based on a Protestant chorale tune; and the Well-Tempered Clavier, a collection of preludes and fugues in every key. Of course, he wrote many other works besides these.

Handel was also German, but he travelled a lot more. In fact, he was working for some noble guy in Germany until he asked for a year's leave to go to England. He enjoyed England so much he didn't come back, but then, ironically enough, his old master came to England and became the English King! As a way of apology, Handel wrote the Water Music and had his orchestra play it on a barge in the Thames when the Royal Family was also going down the river on the 17th of July 1717 (17/7/1717... that's a lot of 1s and 7s!). The King enjoyed it so much that he forgave Handel. Also, unlike Bach, Handel composed mainly secular music. His main exception was his oratorio Messiah, which I'm going to talk about in greater detail in my next post.