Chapter 7: Introduction to Baroque Art and Music

The Baroque Era (1600-1750)• First appeared in Italy

• Baroque: Excessive ornamentation in the visual arts and a rough, bold instrumental sound in music– Energetic detail

– Grandiose, flamboyant

– Drama created through contrast

Baroque Architecture and Music

• Construction on the grandest scale– Saint Peter’s in Rome

• Space filled with abundant, even excessive, decoration

Baroque Music• Grandiose music composed for such vast spaces

• Compositions for “colossal” forces– Baroque orchestra of King Louis XIV sometimes had as

many as 80+ players

– Some sacred choral works required 24, 48, or even 53 separate lines or parts

• Love of energetic detail within a large-scale composition

• Highly ornamental melody above a solid chordal foundation

• Abundance of melodic flourishes

Arcangelo Corelli – Sonata for Violin and Basso Continuo, Opus 5, No.1

• Bass provides the structural support while the violin adds elaborate decoration above

Baroque Painting and Music

Characteristics of Baroque Music• Remarkable variety of musical style

• Introduction of many new musical genres:– Opera, cantata, oratorio, sonata, concerto, and suite

• Two elements remain constant– Expressive, sometimes extravagant melody

– Strong supporting bass

Expressive Melody• Use of soloist to communicate raw individual emotion

• All voices not created equal– Emphasis on the highest and lowest sounding lines– Middle lines fill out the texture

S ---------------------------------------------------------

A---------------------------------------------------------

T ---------------------------------------------------------

B ---------------------------------------------------------

Monody: “Solo song”

• Solo singer supported by a bass line and a few accompanying instruments

• More elaborate, showy, style of singing

• Music reinforces the text

Rock-Solid Harmony• Provides strong harmonic framework for elaborate

melodies

• Basso continuo (continual bass): A small ensemble of at least two instrumentalists who provide a foundation for the melody heard above– Usually a low string instrument and a harpsichord

• Figured bass: Numerical shorthand places below the bass line– Basis for improvised chords

Elements of Baroque Music -Melody

• Two different melodic styles– Somewhat mechanical instrumental style, full of

figural repetitions

– More dramatic, virtuosic style of singing marked by flourished and melismas

• Melody expands lavishly over long musical spans, not short symmetrical phrases

Elements of Baroque Music -Harmony

• Chord progressions that we hear today originated in the Baroque

• Music built around stock chord progressions – (I-VI-IV-V-I)

– Melody unfolds while the chord progressions repeat

• Modern “two-key” system: Major and Minor

Elements of Baroque Music -Rhythm

• Uniformity rather than flexibility

• Meter and certain rhythmic patterns are established at the beginning and continue to the end

• Strong recurring beat (groove)

• Rhythmic clarity and drive

• Rhythmically propulsive

Elements of Baroque Music -Texture

• Homophony: Basso continuo provides a wholly chordal framework– Many 17th-century composers rebelled against the

predominantly polyphonic, imitative texture of the Renaissance• Hostility to Polyphony gradually diminished

• Polyphony: Counterpoint– New genre of the Fugue

– Bach and Handel

Elements of Baroque Music -Dynamics

• Early 17th-century, composers began to write dynamics in their music

• Use of two basic terms: piano (soft) and forte (loud)

• Sudden contrasts of dynamics rather than gradual crescendos and diminuendos

• Terraced dynamics: Shifting of volume suddenly from one level to another– Similar to contrasts between major and minor