Baroque music is a style of music composed from approximately 1600 to 1750. This era followed after the Renaissance, and was followed in turn by the Classical era.
The word "baroque" comes from the
Portuguese word barroco, meaning misshapen pearl. The negative
use of the word comes from a description by Charles de Brosses of the ornate
and heavily ornamented architecture of the Pamphili Palace in Rome. Although
the term was applied to architecture and art criticism in the 19th century, it
wasn't until the 20th century that the term "baroque" was adopted
from Heinrich Wölfflin's art-history vocabulary as a designator for a
historical period.
Baroque music forms a major portion of the "classical
music" canon, being widely studied, performed, and listened to.
The
Baroque period saw the creation of tonality. During the period, composers and
performers used more elaborate musical ornamentation, made changes in musical
notation, and developed new instrumental playing techniques. Baroque music
expanded the size, range, and complexity of instrumental performance, and also
established opera, cantata, oratorio, concerto, and sonata as musical genres.
Many musical terms and concepts from this era are still in use today.
Some of the characteristics of the Baroque are as follows:
The Basso Continuo (Figured Bass): Figured Bass is a sort of musical shorthand that
provides a framework for playing the bass line of the piece. The bass parts
were usually played by the string bass along with either the harpsichord or the
organ, which also played an improvised chord part. While most of the orchestra
played parts that were written out note-by-note, the basso continuo was simply
sketched out in a Figured Bass notation.
One mood throughout the entire piece: This is called the Doctrine of Affections.
Composers in the Baroque period attempted to communicate pure emotion in their
music. There was nothing autobiographical in their compositions, meaning that a
composer never tried to write a “happy” song because he was happy that day.
Rather, they were trying to write music that perfectly expressed the range of
human emotions.
Important String sections: During the Medieval period, the human voice was the predominate instrument
and nearly all music was written for voice. Gregorian chants had no
accompaniment. The motets and madrigals of this period had some accompaniment,
usually an organ or harpsichord. However, Baroque composers began giving
greater attention to the violin, viola, cello and string bass and wrote many
pieces that brought these instruments to the forefront of the orchestra.
Modes were replaced by the Major/Minor key system: Medieval music was written in modes that did not
allow for changes from one mode to another. If a song started in Mode 1, it
ended in Mode 1 with no possible way to shift to Mode 2. With the invention of
the Major and Minor key system, it became possible for composers to modulate
from one key to another related key.
Many different forms are used (e.g. Binary, Fugue): Chants, motets and madrigals were written
in a single form and allowed for very little variations. Baroque music was a
time of experimentation and expansion. Composers began writing pieces in many
forms, most of which followed some kind of fast-slow-fast format. Binary music
was two forms, fast and slow. Fugues were complex and complicated variations on
a single melody that build organically from that single melody into rich and
varied musical tapestries.
Many types of music, e.g. The Chorale, Opera, the Dance Suite: Prior to the Baroque period, most music
was written exclusively for use in religious services. Some these pieces, the
masses, were formed in such a way to allow for very little experimentation or
variation. As the Baroque progressed, musicians began writing more and more
religious music for use in services other than the mass. Secular music, pieces
written either for royalty and the courts or for the general public, became
popular during the Baroque period. Baroque composers wrote thousands of pieces
for both sacred and secular use.
Energetic rhythms (Exuberance), long melodies, many ornaments, contrasts
(especially dynamics, but also in timbres): The music of the Medieval period; chants, motets
and madrigals, was mostly slow and fairly uniform in style and mood. The voice
still dominated as the main instrument, with a few harpsichords and organs
thrown in as accompaniment. That changed dramatically in the Baroque as
composers began experimenting with new rhythmic structures, long complicated
melodies, trills and other musical ornaments and a wide variety of contrasts,
both dynamically (volume) and in the timbre, or texture, of the music.
Types of
Baroque Music:
The Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform in a drama inside
a theatre with dialogue accompanied by music. In traditional opera, singers do
two types of singing: recitative, a speech-inflected style and arias, a more
melodic style. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such
as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance. The performance
is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical
ensemble, which since the early 1800s has been led by a conductor.
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with
an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving
a choir.
The meaning of the term changed over time,
from the simple single voice madrigal of the early 17th century, to the
multi-voice "cantata da camera" and the "cantata da chiesa"
of the later part of that century, from the more substantial dramatic forms of
the 18th century to the usually sacred-texted 19th-century cantata, which was
effectively a type of short oratorio.
Cantatas for use in the liturgy of church
services are called church cantata or sometimes sacred cantata,
others sometimes secular cantata. Johann Sebastian Bach composed around
200 cantatas. Several cantatas were, and still are, written for special
occasions, such as Christmas cantatas.
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical
composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio
includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters,
and arias. However, opera is musical theatre, while oratorio is strictly a
concert piece—though oratorios are sometimes staged as operas, and operas are
sometimes presented in concert form.
In an
oratorio there is generally little or no interaction between the characters,
and no props or elaborate costumes. A particularly important difference is in
the typical subject matter of the text. Opera tends to deal with history and mythology,
including age-old devices of romance, deception, and murder, whereas the plot
of an oratorio often deals with sacred topics, making it appropriate for
performance in the church.
Protestant composers took their stories from
the Bible, while Catholic composers looked to the lives of saints, as well as
to Biblical topics. Oratorios became extremely popular in early 17th-century
Italy partly because of the success of opera and the Catholic Church's
prohibition of spectacles during Lent. Oratorios became the main choice of
music during that period for opera audiences.
Concerto
A concerto (from the Italian: concerto, plural concerti or, often, the anglicised
form concertos) is a musical composition, whose characteristics have
changed over time. In the 17th century, "sacred works for voices and
orchestra were typically called concertos." J. S. Bach was thus reflecting
a long-standing tradition when he used the title `concerto' for many of the
works that we know as cantatas. But in recent centuries, up to the present, a
concerto is a piece usually composed in three parts or movements, in which
(usually) one solo instrument (for instance, a piano, violin, cello or flute)
is accompanied by an orchestra or concert band.
Sonata
There were two new forms which emerged during
this period: the sonata da camera or
chamber sonata and the sonata de chiesa or
church sonata. The sonata da cemera consists of four sets of dances with the
same key. These are the allamande,
courant, sarabande, and gigue.
The sonata da chiesa consists of four movement, with the same key. It follow
the slow-fast-slow-fast form.
Sonata (/səˈnɑːtə/; Italian, pl. sonate;
from Latin and Italian: sonare, "to sound"), in music,
literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata (Latin and
Italian cantare, "to sing"), a piece sung. The term
evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms until the Classical
era, when it took on increasing importance, and is vague. By the early 19th
century it came to represent a principle of composing large-scale works. It was
applied to most instrumental genres and regarded—alongside the fugue—as one of
two fundamental methods of organizing, interpreting and analyzing concert
music. Though the musical style of sonatas has changed since the Classical era,
most 20th- and 21st-century sonatas still maintain the same structure.
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