Baroque Music 16001750

1
Baroque Music (1600-1750)
Monteverdi, Lully, Purcell and the Origin of
Opera Vivaldi and the Concerto Grosso (The
Seasons) George Frideric Handel (Court Music and
Sacred Music) (Royal Fireworks, Water Music, The
Messiah) Johann Sebastian Bach (Sacred Music
Cantata Wachet Auf, St. Matthew Passion, Mass in
B Minor, Keyboard Music Tocatta and Fugue The
Goldberg Variations Concerto The Brandenburg
Concertos)
2
Baroque vs. Renaissance Music
During the Renaissance music had emerged out of
the mystical Medieval era, out of the shrouds of
the Dark Ages. Renaissance secular music was
light, polished and dance-like. Renaissance
sacred music was pure and refined. Polyphonic
texture dominated, and composers explored modal
scales to express the sacred and
transcendent. Leaving the Renaissance, composers
sought driving expressions of emotional drama.
This search for a new sound led to the
development of a new harmony based on the major
and minor tonal systems. The modes possessed too
little drama and tension in them. Renaissance
artists envisioned a world of mathematical
clarity and order. The Baroque era was in violent
motion dynamic and dramatic. (Merrill Notes)
French Nobility in Court Dress Late 17th c. Braun
and Schneiders History of Costume
3
Baroque
Originally, the term baroque was used in
derision, indicating lack of order, chaos and
grotesque. The period is now regarded as one of
individual genius and diversity of
expression. Rome was the center of the Baroque
and of the Counter-reformation. Baroque Art
originally was used as propaganda to bring people
back to the church by appealing to emotion.
During the 17th and 18th centuries Italian music
established itself as a universal vocabulary from
which composers throughout Europe drew
inspiration.
The Hell Hole, a backdrop for a scene design by
Lodovico Burnacini, late 17th c.
4
Features of the Baroque

• Composers sought to realize a more personal
  manner of expression and to represent more
  intense and varied emotional states (the
  affections). This quest led to several musical
  innovations
• An expressive and dominant melody (treble)
  supported by a subordinate harmony (basso
  continuo ) using the major/minor tonality
• Dissonant and chromatic melodic lines, using
  half-steps of the scale
• The basso continuo organizes harmony and provides
  unceasing movement and energy to the composition
• Changing rhythms and dynamics to heighten
  emotional contrasts
• Virtuoso performers are encouraged to display
  their technical abilities through improvisation
  within the piece
• The rise of the violin and the string ensemble
  (Boyden, 163-67) (Grout, 180-85)

5
The Doctrine of Affections
A unity of mood within whole sections or even
whole pieces was one artistic goal of Baroque
composers. Another closely related goal aimed at
the achievement of mood by means of appropriate
figures, rhythms, or harmonies. Any emotional
state could be conjured up by the use of the
proper musical ingredients. This Doctrine of
Affections became codified towards the end of
the Baroque Period. (Boyden, 189-92) Bach, Durch
Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt. (Through Adams
Fall all is lost)
The pedal point of the organ has a reiterated
figure of a descending interval, representing the
fall over and over again.
6
The Invention of Opera
The opera began as an offshoot of Italian
Humanism intent upon reviving the artistic ideals
of classical antiquity. In Florence _at_ 1600 a
group of musicians began experimenting with a new
way to represent words with music Rejecting
polyphony, they believed that a dramma per musica
could be realized most effectively by declaiming
the text to music in a style of reciting called
stile recitativo. The first operas featured
recitativo declaimed to the accompaniment of
figured bass and interspersed with moments of
song (Boyden, 167)
Detail of an engraving of an opera performance in
Milan c.1750. History of Opera
7
Detail from an engraving of an opera performance
from the 1760s. History of Opera
8
Giovanni Panini, Theatre (1750)
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Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643)

• Monteverdi bridged the composing styles of the
  Renaissance and the Baroque
• In operas like Orfeo (1607) Monteverdi combined
  the new style of recitativo and aria with the
  dance forms and choruses of the Renaissance.
• Monteverdis most important innovation was his
  insight into the potential of this new form to
  dramatize the deep emotions of extreme
  psychological situations, like the moment when
  Orfeo is informed of the death of his wife
  Eurydice (Tu se morta). At first he cannot
  believe or understand, but gradually, as his loss
  becomes real to him, his recitativo becomes more
  impassioned. (Boyden, 167-171)

Eurydice recitativo
Orfeo Song
Tu se morta.
Dance
Chorus
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Jean Baptiste Lully
Monteverdis opera was widely imitated,
particularly in the court of Louis XIV under
Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-87) . Lullys carefully
measured recitatives reflected the high literary
standards of the French, and he also incorporated
dances popular at court into his operas. Lully
also introduced an overture to opera which was
characterized by a slow stately section followed
by an animated fugue. (Boyden 172-73) French
Overture
11
Henry Purcell
In England, Henry Purcell (1659-1695), introduced
opera to the restoration court of King William in
a marvelous piece, Dido and Aeneas (1689) based
on the famous episode from Vergils Aeneid. Here
is the last aria (song) from the opera in which
Dido, abandoned by her lover, sings of
approaching death. When I am laid in earth,
remember me Note the string accompaniment over
a chromatic ostinato. It is followed by a chorus
sung by angels as they carry her soul to heaven.
(Boyden 174-75)
Rubens, Suicide of Dido (1606)
Lamento aria (2)
chorus
12
Baroque Instrumental Music The Keyboard
The Baroque Era featured the flowering of
instrumental music, fully emancipated from its
role as accompaniment for the voice. Baroque
composers had inherited from the Renaissance a
modal system grounded in vocal polyphony whose
potential for harmony was limited. By the end of
the 17th century, musical forms became more
complex because composers had begun experimenting
with sophisticated modulations of key within a
composition Many compositions were designed to
demonstrate the virtuosity of the individual
performers talents. A tocatta is a composition
which aims to suggest the effect of an improvised
performance. Toccatas best exhibit the out
thrusting, fantastic, and dramatic aspects of the
Baroque spirit in music. (Grout 233-34)
Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D minor (1708)
Prelude and Fugue in A minor
Abbey Church at Amorbach with Pipe Organ
13
Bachs Goldberg Variations
Bachs music for keyboard includes masterpieces
in every form known to the late Baroque
preludes, fantasies, tocattas, fugues, dance
suites, early sonatas, and concertos. One
popular form of Baroque keyboard music was the
theme and variations. The Aria with Different
Variations (1741) (better known as The Goldberg
Variations), displays Bachs mastery of
composition. The entire piece is a perfectly
organized structure of magnificent
proportions. The theme is a sarabande in two
balanced sections its essential bass and
harmonic structure is preserved in all thirty
variations. The variations are grouped in threes
with the last of each group being a strict canon.
The non-canonic variations are of many different
types, including inventions, fugues, a French
overture, slow arias, and sparkling bravura
pieces for two keyboards. The diverse moods and
styles of the variations are unified not only by
the recurring theme but also by the symmetrical
order in which the movements are arranged. (Grout
267)
Aria da capo
1
4
7
9
11
12
13
20
24
25
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Baroque Instrumental Music The Violin

• Baroque composers wrote music for a remarkable
  new instrument the violin. During the Baroque
  Era, string music became the dominant form of
  classical music. The violin became popular
  because of two essential properties its ability
  to imitate the human voice and its technical
  capabilities to inspire virtuoso performances.
• Compositions for strings took many different
  forms trio sonatas and solo sonatas were written
  for small ensembles.
• Pachabel, Canon in D Major
• Bach Chaconne for Solo Violin
• Bach Sonata for Violin

15
The Baroque Concerto Vivaldis Four Seasons
Towards the end of the 17th century, a
distinction of styles began to be made between
chamber music and orchestral music that is
between ensemble music with only one instrument
to a part and ensemble music with more than one
instrument playing the same part. (Grout, 247) A
new kind of composition, the concerto, appeared
at the end of the 17th c. and became the most
important form of Baroque orchestral composition
after 1700. The concerto helped synthesize
several different Baroque compositional
innovations exploiting the virtuoso abilities of
a performer, contrasting two unequal and opposing
masses of tone, building a composition with a
firm bass and a florid treble, organizing the
sonority of a composition around the major-minor
key system, and building a longer work out of
separate autonomous sections or movements.
(Grout, 248) A concerto grosso presents a
concertino accompanied by a string orchestra.
Listen to the contrast between the soloists in
the concertino with the greater mass of the
orchestra (the ripieno, literally, the filling)
Listen also for the alternation between the
ritornello (the statement of the main theme by
the orchestra) and the soloists development of
that theme. (Boyden, 212-13) Vivaldi, The
Seasons, Spring, (1725) Allegro, Largo, Allegro
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Bachs Brandenburg Concertos
Bachs Brandenburg Concertos (dedicated to the
Margrave of Brandenburg, 1721) demonstrate his
remarkable ability to extend previous composers
ideas in any form of composition. Bach equals
Vivaldi in his sparkling melodies and driving
rhythm, but his compositions enliven the harmony
they expand instrumentation, mixing string and
wind instruments in varied combination and they
mix the concertino and ripieno instruments in a
polyphonic texture so that the bodies of tone are
less differentiated. (Boyden 214) Bach,
Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 Allegro
Adagio Allegro Note the concertino of
violin, flute, oboe and trumpet, the orchestral
body of strings and the figured continuo.
Gentleman and Lady of the Court of Louis
XIV Braun and Schneider History of Costume
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George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)
Handel was born in the German speaking town of
Halle and studied extensively in Italy before
coming to England in 1711 under the patronage of
George I, the previous Elector of Hanover. His
success in London with the Italian opera Rinaldo
inaugurated the vogue for opera and oratorio in
England. Operas and oratorios form the most
important part of Handels work although he wrote
pieces for keyboard instruments and string
ensembles. His mastery of technique enabled him
to write music suggesting the contrasting moods
(the affections) with enormous poetic depth. He
deliberately emphasized melody and harmony rather
than counterpoint, and his appeal to the middle
class audience reflected the social changes
transforming society as a whole. (Grout 275-81)
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"The Beggar's Opera" allegorical engraving by
Hogarth contrasting the English taste for Gay's
Ballad opera with Italian opera
19
Handels Royal Fireworks Music and Water Music
In 1749 Handel was commissioned to write a grand
piece of music as part of a national celebration
of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle that was to
include a massive fire works display. The music
was not only a great success but was the occasion
of Londons first recorded traffic jam the
London Bridge was out of action for hours. The
Fireworks Music itself is a grand suite whose
overture has a broad, majestic opening suitable
for an open air performance. The French suite was
an orchestral piece that incorporated several
miniature pieces inspired by dance rhythms such
as the the courante, sarabande, and so on, all
highly stylized and refined. (Grout 239) The
Water Music was written thirty years earlier for
an royal water party on the Thames during an
early summer evening. The evenings entertainment
included a choice supper at Lord Ranelaghs villa
on the river at Chelsea. (Cudsworth, Disc Notes)
In these spectacles the King asserted power he
and only he could attract the wealth which made
England able to conduct its wars and so become a
world power.
Fireworks Suite Ouverture Minuet and Trio Water
Music Suite in D Major Hornpipe Minuet Lentement W
ater Music Suite in F Major Jig
20
(No Transcript)
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Handels Messiah
Handels great oratorios are based on the musical
machinery of Italian opera, to which he adds the
massive power of the large scale Anglican church
chorus. The orchestra functions as a supporting
accompaniment to the individual voice or the
chorus.(Boyden 195-96) The Messiah (1741) is
Handels most famous oratorio. The story of
Jesus nativity, passion and resurrection is
retold in epic fashion by means of recitatives,
arias and choruses. Like in Italian opera,
virtuoso arias occur throughout the action. The
choruses vary from homophonic to polyphonic. In
the Hallelujah chorus, the most exciting and
famous piece in The Messiah, Handel achieves
extraordinary emotional intensity through varying
devices massive full chords contrast with
imitative counterpoint and then with single
voices proclaiming a short phrase. (Boyden 201-03)
Chorus For Unto Us a Child is Born
Chorus Hallelujah
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Johan Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Bach is generally regarded as the greatest
composer of his time he absorbed every style and
form current in the early 18th c into his music
and then transformed them. In his music the
opposed principles of harmony and counterpoint,
melody and polyphony find equilibrium. The beauty
of his themes, the inventiveness and clarity of
his expression, the technical perfection of his
composition, and the grand proportion of his
works make his music timeless. Yet Bach would
have been astonished by the awe with which his
achievements are held today. In his time he was
regarded as a virtuoso organist but not as a
master composer. He regarded himself as a
conscientious craftsman doing a job to the best
of his ability for the satisfaction of his
patrons, for the pleasure of his fellowman, and
to the glory of God. (Grout 261, 274)
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Bachs Cantatas
Bach spent most of his career in the service of
the Lutheran Church, first as an organist and
later as director of music at two churches in
Leipzig. For this post Bach was required to
compose and produce music for the Lutheran
service each week, and over the course of twenty
years, he produced approximately three hundred
cantatas. (Boyden 204) The cantata was the main
music of the lengthy Sunday service, composed
about a text suitable for a particular Sunday of
the year. The music for the cantata was fairly
elaborate, using various combinations of
choruses, simple settings of the chorale,
recitatives, arias, and duets. The cantata was
accompanied by the orchestra in addition to the
organ playing the figured bass. (Boyden
204) Wachet Auf (Sleepers Awake) Cantata No.140
is one of Bachs most famous. It was composed for
the 27th Sunday of Trinity in the year 1731 and
is based on the parable of the wise and foolish
virgins who await the coming of Christ as the
bridegroom to whom their souls will be united.
(Matt. 251-13) This cantata combines large scale
chorus, with recitatives and arias in the form of
duets between Christ and the Soul. (Boyden,
204-06) This selection is from the opening
chorus Verse two of the chorale for tenor,
figured bass and strings Aria in the form of a
duet between Christ and the Soul 1, 2
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Bachs St. Matthew Passion
In addition to the cantatas, Bach composed sacred
music on a far larger scale for extraordinary
occasions. In the St.Matthew Passion (1729) Bach
represents scenes from the final days of Christ
by means of a large chorus, soloists, and
orchestral accompaniment. It relies on a plan not
unlike that of a Neapolitan opera a series of
scenes each comprised of a narrative and then a
lyrical reflection on it. Some scenes are simple
recitative and aria, permitting the individual to
express an emotional reaction to what has taken
place. In other scenes the reflective and
emotional commentary takes the form of a chorale
in which the collective emotion of the whole
Christian congregation is expressed. (Boyden
207-08) The St. Matthew Passion is the apotheosis
of Lutheran church music in it the chorale, the
concertato style, the recitative, the arioso, and
the da capo aria are perfectly united under the
ruling majesty of the religious theme. All these
elements, save the chorale, are equally
characteristic of Baroque opera. (Grout 273) Of
the theological ideas that permeate Bachs work,
the most central to his thought were the ideas of
atonement and redemption. According to Protestant
theology, mankind was eternally cursed with
original sin through Adams Fall, but man was
saved from eternal damnation by Christs supreme
sacrifice on the cross, which atoned for Mans
original sin and redeemed each Christian
believer. For Bach death held no terror on the
contrary, it held out to him the promise of
eternal salvation reunion with the Savior in
paradise where all sin has been washed away by
the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. (Boyden 205)
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Bachs St. Matthew Passion
Here is the opening chorus. Come ye Daughters,
share my anguish. It uses two choirs, two
orchestras, and a third unison choir of boys. In
this arioso, the chorus interrupts the tenor
periodically to comment emotionally as the
soloist declares that he too would pray with
Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. I would
beside my Lord be watching Here is the Alto
recitative Ah, Golgotha Here is the soprano
aria In Love my Savior now is dying And here is
the final Passion Chorale after Jesus death on
the cross. In the final recitative note the
stupendous three measures of chorus on the words
Truly this was the son of God (Grout 273)
(detail) Supper at Emmaus Rembrandt 1648
26
Bachs Mass in B Minor
The Mass in B Minor does not belong to the
mainstream of Bachs activities as a churchman.
In 1733 Bach sought the patronage of the Catholic
sovereign Augustus III, the King Elector of
Poland-Saxony who had his court in Dresden. To
accompany his petition, Bach composed and sent to
Augustus the Kyrie and Gloria of the Mass in B
Minor. Later Bach completed the other parts of
the Mass (Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei). The Mass
in B Minor is Bachs grandest and most monumental
work. From the opening chords of the Kyrie, we
are in the presence of music of overpowering
magnitude. The dynamic energy of its rhythm
carries us forward with a never-ceasing movement,
and the extended long arc of the vocal lines
sustains the tremendous span of the sound. The
Latin text of the Mass still survived in
abbreviated form in the Lutheran liturgy. Some of
the texts are set to traditional music from
Gregorian chant. (Credo) Other texts are set in a
manner suggested by theology the Et in unun
Dominum is composed for alto and soprano in free
canon, two voices using the same music, to
symbolize the oneness of Christ and God. The mood
of the Mass ranges from the somber to outbursts
of praise and adulation. The Mass in B Minor is
Bach at his greatest. It transcends
denominational limits. Bach distills the joys and
sorrows of Christendom into one tremendous
affirmation of universal faith. (Boyden 209-11)
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Bachs Mass in B Minor
The Mass in B Minor consists of choruses and
arias, but there are no chorales or recitatives.
The Mass was written in the final years of Bachs
creative life, but he drew on compositions from
throughout his musical career for its various
sections. It can be seen as a compilation of his
lifes work. The opening chorus of the Kyrie The
Credo in unum Deum (based on Cantus firmus from
Gregorian Chant) The Et in Unum Dominum
(soprano/alto canon) The Cum Sanctu Spiritu in
Gloria Dei Patria (the final movement of the
Gloria) The Crucifixus (note the ostinato
bass) Followed by Et resurrexit tertia die
Durer, Albrecht Self-Portrait at 28, 1500
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Works Cited
An Introduction to Music (1956) by David D.
Boyden, Alfred A. Knopf, New York A History of
Western Music (1964) by Donald J. Grout (Cornell
University) W.W. Norton and Company Inc. New
York Music Examples from The Norton Anthology of
Classical Music, Part One Ancient to
Baroque Vivaldi The Seasons, Spring from
Vivaldiana via the MP3 Website The Goldberg
Variations via the MP3 Website Bach Brandenburg
Concerto 2 via MP3 Website Bach Mass in B Minor
performed by ProArte Orchestra and Chorus. Kurt
reidel conductor (1993) Philips Classics Bachs
St. Matthew Passion performed by the Philharmonia
Orchestra and Choir, Verner Klemperer conductor
(1962) EMI Classics Handel Messiah performed by
the London Symphony Orchestra and Choir Sir Colin
Davis conductor (1966) Philips Classics
Productions Handel Music for the Royal Fireworks
and Water Music performed by Academy of St.
Martin in the Fields, Sir Neville Marriner
conductor (1972) Decca Record Co.