Music in the Baroque

Humanity is in continuous evolution, living, creating, making mistakes and learning to keep moving forward. As a collective, we have thousands of years of knowledge that has been accumulated and put to the test to decide what has real value for our future.

Art is not the exception but is in fact a crucial part of evolution, as it represents our need for expression and the motives behind it. Therefore we can certainly say that creativity is a way of telling and understanding history. In this lesson from a TEACHER we will talk about one of these stages in musical art with music in the baroque: short summary and we will understand more about its different expressions.

Within the music stages we have to talk about the Baroque. We locate the baroque period in Europe during the s. XVII, approximately dates from the birth of the opera (year 1600) until the death of the composer Johan Sebastian Bach (1750). The baroque happened with more boom in Italy, Germany, England, France and Spain. During this stage the ideology was applied not only to music but to art in general. Special appreciation was given to

the workmanship, the extremes and the contrast, is sometimes even described as "heavy" and "twisted".

For music this time in history turns out to be interesting since it was a time of reforms and religious transitions. As a result, music was used as a means of propagation by the church and the nobility. It is in this way that music becomes a powerful element such as public, decisive and influential show and the musician becomes a servant of the nobility.

It is at this time that instrumental language developmentof the orchestra. This happens as a result of the popularity of opera, which was performed in large theaters and was accompanied by instrumental groups. In the baroque orchestra, the predominant area was the stringed instruments.

These are the characteristic elements musicals in baroque music:

• The appearance of the concept of tonality.
• Low of continuous use.
• Clear and simple beat rhythms.
• Simultaneous extreme voices (bipolar texture).
• Chords of functional progressions.
• Wide spaces for improvisation and virtuosity.
• Strong sound contrasts.

Some of the notable musicians of this stage were: Georg Fredrich Händel, Georg Phillip Telemann, Antonio Vivaldi, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Henry Purcell, Domenico Scarlatti, Claudio Moteverdi and perhaps one of the most influential musicians in history: Johann Sebastian Bach.

Bach contributed a prominent number of compositions that stand out for their great intellectual value and structural balance. Bach is considered the master of counterpoint and his works would serve as inspiration for future essential musicians in history such as Mozart, Beethoven, Franz Liszt and Wagner among many others.

It is at this time that the important musical forms like the opera, the oratorio, the cantata, the concert, the sonata and the suite. In general we can divide the forms into vowels and instrumentals.

Vowel Forms

The most prominent is the Opera. This form is of the theatrical genre and was widely popular. The opera has a basic argument that is embodied in a libretto and performed mainly by singers on stage, accompanied by instrumentalists.

Another popular vocal form was the Oratory, which is very similar to opera but has its primary focus on choirs, without staging. Within other forms we have the cantata, liturgically, and the motet, less popular and almost obsolete during the time. They were religious compositions for several equal voices.

Instrumental Forms

Within the instrumental forms we find the sonata, the concertgross, the suite room and some solo forms dedicated to improvisation such as the prelude, the toccata, the fantasy and the leakage.

Some ways like suite room specifically, it establishes its structure as a work of 4 movements, which in turn have their own name and characteristics. The suite has a specific order to proceed with these movements and performed combinations between them. These were generally allemande, cuorante, sarabande, giga, minuet and rondo.

The sonata is another prominent form, dedicated to being played by a soloist accompanied by one or two instruments. The usual formation consisted of violin, flute or oboe for soloist, cello and some instrument for chords such as the harp, organ, harpsichord or lute.

Now that you know more about the baroque, perhaps you can find in current works the reminiscences of its legacy and understand its reasons for being.