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Baroque: Baroque Period
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The term Baroque is ... used to designate the style of music composed during a period that overlaps with that of Baroque art, but usually encompasses a slightly later period. J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel are often considered its culminating figures.
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Generally speaking, the Baroque era is a period of ecstasy and exuberance, and of dynamic tensions in contrast to the assuredness and self-reliance of the Renaissance period. Particularly the early Baroque music (prior to 1650) shows, in its canzonas and toccatas, striking traits of capriciousness, exuberance, and irregularity while later composers such as Carissimi and Corelli brought about a trend towards greater restraint and regularity of style.
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The two principal keyboard instruments of the Baroque era, the harpsichord, a plucked keyboard instrument, and the organ, are associated, respectively, with secular and sacred music. Harpsichord construction and composition reached its zenith during this period. Prized both as a solo and accompanying instrument, the harpsichord flourished throughout Europe. The lute, like the harpsichord, was used as a solo and accompanying instrument and enjoyed four centuries of favor, from the later Middle Ages until the end of the 17th century. Although a primitive piano was invented during the Baroque period, it remained a curiosity until the middle of the eighteenth century. The Classical period's Haydn and Mozart were the first great composers to write for the piano.
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The Baroque style first appeared in Europe in the late 1500s. It remained the dominant style until the more relaxed and intimate Rococo period developed in the 1700s. The word baroque comes from the Portuguese word meaning "irregularly shaped pearl." It was first used in the 17th century to describe something that did not meet the classical standards of the Renaissance. Baroque artists created art that was ornately decorated, dynamic and was filled with emotion. All available space on a canvas was filled with action, detail and movement.
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Baroque music shares with Renaissance music a heavy use of polyphony and counterpoint. However, its use of these techniques differs from Renaissance music. In the Renaissance, harmony is more the result of consonances incidental to the smooth flow of polyphony, while in the early Baroque era the order of these consonances becomes important, for they begin to be felt as chords in a hierarchical, functional tonal scheme. Around 1600 there is considerable blurring of this definition: for example essentially tonal progressions around cadential points in madrigals are noted, while in early monody the feeling of tonality is still rather tenuous. Another distinction between Renaissance and Baroque practice in harmony is the frequency of chord root motion by third in the earlier period, while motion of fourths or fifths predominates later (which partially defines functional tonality). In addition, Baroque music uses longer lines and stronger rhythms: the initial line is extended, either alone or accompanied only by the basso continuo, until the theme reappears in another voice.
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Baroque actually expressed new values, which often are summarised in the use of metaphor and allegory, widely found in Baroque literature, and in the research for the "maraviglia" (wonder, astonishment — as in Marinism), the use of artifices. If Mannerism was a first breach with Renaissance, Baroque was an opposed language. The psychological pain of Man -- a theme disbanded after the Copernican and the Lutheran revolutions in search of solid anchors, a proof of an "ultimate human power" -- was to be found in both the art and architecture of the Baroque period. A relevant part of works was made on religious themes, since the Roman Church was the main "customer."
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Baroque Period