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The term baroque refers to music written
during the period extending roughly from 1600 to 1750, beginning
with the first attempts at opera, in Italy, and ending with
the death of Johann Sebastian BACH, whose works represent
the zenith of the era's contrapuntal style. Baroque music
is, however, a broad category that can be divided both chronologically
and by distinct national styles.
In the late 18th century--a period during which the dominant
style stressed elegance and simplicity--writers used the word
baroque to describe earlier music (as well as painting, sculpture,
and architecture) that seemed to them to be distorted by a
profusion of unnatural ornamentation. (Baroque, a French word,
means an irregularly shaped pearl, of the type often used
in the extremely fanciful jewelry of the post-Renaissance
period.)
By the end of the 16th century, Italian composers had perfected
the MADRIGAL, a popular form of polyphonic text setting in
which the music reflected the intensity of the emotions suggested
in the poetry. The solo song forms of the time reflected this
realistic emotionalism too. Gradually, song forms were extended
into longer dramatic settings. Claudio MONTEVERDI was chief
among the early experimenters in vocal music; his operas and
books of madrigals stand as the high points of this early
period of the baroque.
The early Italian CANTATA was a form in which a story--usually
secular--was related by a solo singer through recitatives
and arias, to a sparse basso continuo (a lute or harpsichord,
usually with a bass viol emphasizing the bass line). Over
the course of 150 years, this form traveled through Europe
and was greatly transformed, particularly in Germany, where
it evolved into works that could include several singers and
a chorus. By the end of the baroque era, Bach was composing
cantatas in which sacred hymn tunes played a central and unifying
role, and that frequently ended with grand chorale settings.
The ORATORIO, an extended dramatic work on a religious theme,
had its roots in Rome and spread throughout Europe through
the work of the German-English composer George Frideric HANDEL.
It was in England, and in English, that he composed the most
popular of all oratorios, the Messiah (1741).
The SONATA, an instrumental work, is another form that had
its genesis in the early baroque. In Italy, the term sonata
meant a group of slow and fast dance movements, or an abstract
work in contrasting slow and fast sections, the latter known
as a "church sonata." Among the Italian composers
who wrote in both styles, perhaps the most inventive was Arcangelo
CORELLI.
Outside Italy the dance sets were called suites and followed
their own evolutionary path. The sonata's evolution was more
dramatic, however. Like the MOTET and the cantata, it expanded
from a single-movement two- or three-part form, such as that
found in the keyboard sonatas of Domenico SCARLATTI, into
multimovement forms such as those Bach composed. The early
sonatas could be either for solo instruments or for small
ensembles. Toward the end of the 17th century, as the middle
baroque period gave way to the late, or high, baroque, the
ensemble sonata gave way to the concerto grosso, where an
opposition is set up between the full ensemble (the ripieno,
or "filling") and a smaller group, typically composed
of two violins and continuo (the concertino). From the concerto
grosso emerged the solo CONCERTO, in which a solo instrument
is set against the forces of the full ensemble. Bach's Brandenburg
Concertos are fine examples of the concerto grosso style;
his solo concertos, along with those of Antonio VIVALDI, are
models of the genre.
Central in the development of the sonata and the concerto,
and the various vocal forms as well, is another of the baroque
era's novel elements: tonality. By the middle of the 16th
century the old system of church modes was being replaced
by a new concept of key relationships. Throughout the early
baroque period, composers moved freely from one key to another
through modulations, usually involving chords common to more
than one key as jumping-off points. They produced, for the
time, daringly chromatic music.
Gradually, a system evolved whereby the relationship between
keys was established in an orderly way . Bach's Well-Tempered
Clavier illustrates these relationships. It also demonstrates
two other important baroque forms, the freely invented PRELUDE
and the complex, tightly structured FUGUE.
The great baroque forms emerged during the era's early and
middle periods. The late baroque saw the expansion and refinement
of these forms, as well as the further development of distinct
national schools. Thus, while the models were by-and-large
Italian, German and French variants were immediately distinguishable
through certain hallmarks. One such French trait was the use
of dotted rhythms, which gave dance movements, as well as
preludes and overtures, an especially lively character that
came to be associated with France, even when used by composers
elsewhere. In Germany, elements of both Italian basic style
and French fashion were prevalent, but these were tempered
by a more staid Lutheran musical tradition and by a fascination
with contrapuntal complexity.
In all countries, musicians were expected to add ornamentation
and embellishment to the music they found on the printed page--much
the same way a jazz player today is expected to add improvised
filigree to the shape of a standard tune. A series of signs
developed representing frequently used ornaments--the trill,
turn, grace note or appoggiatura, tremolo, and so forth. Since
a single sign could be played in several different ways, and
because each ornament could be represented by several different
signs, there was wide scope for improvisation. Instrumental
music was often highly ornamented. The FIGURED BASS, another
baroque-era innovation, allowed the players of the bass accompaniment
to improvise around a given harmonic outline. Singers of opera
seria often displayed astonishingly lengthy series of embellishments
and CADENZAS. Some of the era's music--Bach's for instance--is
notated so densely that it probably includes a great deal
of what might originally have been ornamentation.
The baroque era in music was crucial to the development of
the modern musical language. During this century and a half,
forms emerged that have remained standard, even as they evolved.
The codification of tonality and the establishment of the
tempered tuning system were of vital importance. Equally important,
though, is the fact that the prolific composers of the era
left works that continue to speak eloquently over a distance
of centuries.
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