Baroque music: Encyclopedia II - Baroque music - Brief History of Baroque Music

Baroque music - Brief History of Baroque Music

Composers of the Baroque

Baroque music - 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. Harmonic thinking had existed among particular composers in the previous era, notably Gesualdo, however the Renaissance is felt to give way to the Baroque at the point where it becomes the common vocabularly. Some historians of music point to the introduction of the seventh chord without preparation as being the key break with the past. This created the idea that chords, rather than notes, created the sense of closure, which is one of the fundamental ideas of what would much later be called tonality.

Italy formed one of the cornerstones of the new style, as the papacy, besieged by Reformation but with coffers fattened by the immense revenues flowing in from Hapsburg conquest, searched for artistic means to promote faith in the Roman Catholic Church. One of the most important musical centers was Venice, which had both secular and sacred patronage available.

One of the important transitional figures would come out of the drive to revive Catholicism against the growing doctrinal, artistic and social challenge mounted by Protestantism: Giovanni Gabrieli. His work is largely considered to be in the "High Renaissance" style. However, his innovations became to be considered foundational to the new style. Among these are instrumentation (labelling instruments specifically for specific tasks) and the use of dynamics.

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.

Monteverdi became the most visible of a generation of composers who felt that there was a secular means to this "modern" approach to harmony and text, and in 1607 his opera Orfeo would be the landmark which demonstrated the welter of effects and techniques that were associated with this new school, called seconda prattica, to distinguish it from the older style or prima prattica. Monteverdi was a master of both, producing precisely styled motets that extended the forms of Marenzio and Giaces de Wert. But it is his new style pieces which were to be the most visible changes to the Baroque. These included features which are recognizable even to the end of the baroque period, including use of idiomatic writing, virtuoso flourishes and what Stanley Sadie calls "a thorough going" use of new techniques.

This musical language would prove to be international, as Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) a German composer who studied in Venice, would adopt it to the liturgical needs of the Elector of Saxony, and serve as the choir master in Dresden.

Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643).

Baroque music - Middle Baroque music 1654-1707

In the middle Baroque the most influential composers include Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687), Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713), Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707) and Henry Purcell (1659-1695).

Baroque music - Late Baroque music 1707-1760

In the late Baroque, the leading figures 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).

Baroque music - The Baroque's influence on later music

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.

The practice of the Baroque era was the norm against which new composition was measured, and there came to be a division between sacred works, which held more closely to the Baroque style from, secular, or "profane" works, which were in the new style.

Especially in the Catholic countries of central Europe, the Baroque style continued to be represented in sacred music through the end of the eighteenth century, in much the way that the stile antico of the Renaissance continued to live in the sacred music of the early 17th century. The masses and oratorios of Haydn and Mozart, while Classical in their orchestration and ornamentation, have many Baroque features in their underlying contrapuntal and harmonic structure. The decline of the baroque saw various attempts to mix old a new techniques, and many composers who continued to hew to the older forms well into the 1780's. Many cities in Germany continued to maintain performance practices from the Baroque into the 1790's, including Leipzig.

In England, the enduring popularity of Handel ensured the success of Avison, Boyce, and Arne—among other accomplished imitators—well into the 1780s. By this time it was though of as an older style, and was required for graduation from the burgeoning number of conservatories of music, and for compositions written for the sacred context.

Because Baroque music was the basis for pedagogy, it retained a stylistic influence even after it has ceased to be the dominant style of composing or of music making. Even as baroque practice, for example the thoroughbass, fell out of use, it continued to be part of musical notation. In the early 19th century, scores by Baroque masters were printed in complete edition, and this led to a renewed interest in the "strict style" of counterpoint, as it was then called. With Felix Mendelssohn's revival of Bach's choral music, the Baroque style became an influence through the 19th century as a paragon of academic and formal purity. Throughout the 19th century, the fugue in the style of Bach held enormous influence for composers as a standard to aspire to, and a form to include in serious instrumental works.

The 20th century would name the Baroque as a period, and begin to study its music. Baroque form and practice would influence composers as diverse as Arnold Schoenberg, Max Reger, Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók. The early 20th century would also see a revival of the middle Baroque composers such as Purcell and Vivaldi.

There are several instances of contemporary pieces being published as "rediscovered" Baroque masterworks. Some examples of this include a viola concerto written by Henri Casadesus but attributed to Handel, as well as several pieces attributed by Fritz Kreisler to lesser-known figures of the Baroque such as Pugnani and Padre Martini. Today, there is a very active core of composers writing works exclusively in the Baroque style, an example being Giorgio Pacchioni.

Various works have been labelled "neo-baroque" for a focus on imitative polyphony, including the works of Giacinto Scelsi, Paul Hindemith, Paul Creston and Martinu, even though they are not in the Baroque style proper. Musicologists attempted to complete various works from the Baroque, most notably Bach's The Art of Fugue. Because the Baroque style is a recognized point of reference, implying not only music, but a particular period and social manner, Baroque styled pieces are sometimes created for media, such as film and television. Composer Peter Schickele parodies classical and Baroque styles under the pen name PDQ Bach.

Baroque performance practice had a renewed influence with the rise of "Authentic" or Historically Informed Performance in the late 20th century. Texts by Quantz and Leopold Mozart among others, formed the basis for performances which attempted to recover some of the aspects of baroque sound world, including one on a part performance of works by Bach, use of gut strings rather than metal, reconstructed harpsichords, use of older playing techniques and styles. Several popular ensembles would adopt some or all of these techniques, including the Anonymous 4 and the Academy of Ancient Music, as well as established groups such as Boston's Handel and Haydn Society. This movement would then attempt to apply some of the same methods to classical and even early romantic era performance.

See also Neo-Baroque, Post-Baroque

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Brief History of Baroque Music", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki