When was the Baroque interval?
From about 1600 to 1750.
The place does the time period ‘Baroque’ come from?
The phrase might be derived from the Portuguese phrase ‘barroco’, that means ‘oddly-shaped pearl’. It was initially used to explain the flowery German structure of the seventeenth and 18th centuries – and it was not supposed as reward. Within the minds of critics, who most well-liked restraint, the works of artists akin to Bernini and Pietro da Cortona appeared weird — just like the misshapen pearl. Ultimately the time period got here for use to explain the type of music from the identical interval.
What is the historic backstory to the period (in a nutshell)?
The Baroque interval was a time of nice spiritual, political and philosophical improvement. Protestantism was sweeping by means of northern Europe, taking deep root in England and Germany, the place Johann Sebastian Bach spent all of his life (he wrote a lot of his music for the Lutheran church). As monarchs amassed ever higher wealth and energy, the state was more and more difficult the authority of the church. Enlightenment ideology was gathering momentum, putting new emphasis on progressivism and human purpose. Sir Isaac Newton, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler and the English doctor William Harvey had been making large strides in science, spherical about the identical time that literary giants akin to Shakespeare, Racine and John Milton had been drilling down into the small print of human psychology: it was between 1599 and 1601 that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet. So it isn’t stunning that the music of the interval went by means of some pretty important adjustments of its personal.
Resembling?
It turned extra emotive, elaborate and dramatic, as composers turned extra conscious of music’s potential as a way of communication. With the introduction of the pianoforte, an early model of the piano which might play each loudly and quietly, composers started to harness dynamics as an expressive software. Additionally they more and more embraced the probabilities of instrumental music: among the hottest Baroque works, akin to Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons, are instrumental. As with Baroque structure, ornamentation turned ubiquitous; even the best melodies had been embellished with trills, acciaccaturas, appoggiaturas and mordents. However maybe the largest improvement was the emergence of equal temperament (a tuning system during which the octave is split into twelve equal semitones) and the institution of the 12 main and minor keys that we nonetheless use in Western music right this moment.
What had been the musical types of the interval?
Among the many hottest varieties had been the Prelude and Fugue, the cantata, the concerto, the oratorio, the sonata and opera, the latter of which turned firmly established throughout the Baroque period, constructing on the foundations laid by Monteverdi.
And essentially the most well-known works?
Among the many many, many widespread works of the interval, there are the blockbusters: Handel’s Messiah and Zadok the Priest; Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons and Gloria; and any variety of works by Bach: the St Matthew Ardour; Mass in B minor; the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; Goldberg Variations; Brandenburg Concertos; and the Effectively-Tempered Clavier. However this actually is the tip of a colossal iceberg. Have enjoyable chipping away at it your self.
