Music History

Prepared by: Divyen Patel

Date: 1/8/10

After the 1600s a new artistic style of music arose, called the Baroque. This word

taken literally means, “irregular” and is applied to the dynamic and recalcitrant artistic

creativity of that time period. At the beginning the Baroque style grew from the catholic

pomp and the Counter-Reformation. Later, as this style went north, it started to become

popular in the royal courts, where it began to symbolize the emerging powers of the new

monarchies. Anywhere the Baroque style emerged, it showed combinations of power,

massiveness, or even dramatic intensity, mixed with pageantry, color, and theatrical

adventure. Also during this era of music, instrumental music became just as important as

vocal music, in both quality and quantity. Some different pieces that were composed in

this era were; Concerto for Four Harpsichords, Overture in the French style, Missa in G

major, Trio sonata, and Prelude and Fugue in A minor.

A very distinct feature of the Baroque Era was the basso continuo. This was a

purely instrumental concept. It is music that is played with the use of one or more bass

instruments and a keyboard instrument. This gave bass parts an importance of their own

in all the areas of ensemble music. Also in the Baroque Era thematic variation started to

occur in all the aspects of instrumental music. In addition to this, sequencing was also

used, which was the repetition of the melody on consecutive higher or lower pitches.

Another distinctive characteristic of the Baroque Era was the distinction of the chamber

ensemble and the orchestra, which started to take place in the late 1600s. Now, equal

tempered tuning of keyboard instruments was common, the old method of tuning, called

intonation was no longer used. Instead they used Bach’s The Well Tempered Clavier,

which was composed to show equality of keys in this new system.

This Baroque era had the continuation of all the instruments that were used during

the Renaissance. Now, during this era, there were many new mechanical and

technological developments to the instruments, and they started to develop the

instruments we see and know today. Another major development in the Baroque Era was

the development of the violin family in the end of the 1600s. Some instruments that were
used during the Baroque Era were keyboard instruments, like the clavichord, organ, and

the harpsichord. They were all used for basso continuo parts and solo music. The

clavichord made music by striking a metal wedge striking against a string when a key

was pressed. The sound quality for this instrument was weak, but the instrument was still

able to produce some dynamics, it was mainly used in Germany, and mostly played as a

solo instrument or in a small ensemble. The organ was a more powerful, and was mostly

used in church music and used as a solo instrument or accompaniment instrument, in this

era a vast growth in organ literature took place. The harpsichord was very popular and

had various name in the different parts of Europe. In Italy it was called a clavicembalo, in

England, a virginal, in France, a clavecen, and in Germany, klavier. The harpsichord

usually had two manual keyboards; it produced a tone with quills, which plucked the

strings mechanically every time a key was pressed. The tone of the harpsichord was

stronger than the tone of the clavichord, but could not produce dynamics. The

harpsichord was the main instrument in the basso continuo; it had the most distinctive

sounds of the Baroque Era and the most favored instrument in solo music. Also in the

Baroque Era string instruments were used, the principal one was the viol family, which

was soon wiped out when the new violin family came out. The violin soon became the

new leader of the stringed instruments, and its sound became the dominant tone of the

late Baroque ensemble music. The bass viol, or the contrabass, or double bass was still

being used, even though the other viols died out. Also during the 1600s, the lute began to

lose its dominance in the music world. The Baroque Era also utilized wind instruments;

the principal ones were the bassoon, flute, and oboe. The new transverse flute began to

become a common solo and ensemble instrument. Brass instruments like horns, trumpets,
and trombones were used in large ensembles, but rarely ever as solo instruments. The

Baroque Era also had a percussion instrument, it was the timpani and it was cautiously

used in the orchestra.

The Baroque Era had many composers, like Archangelo Corelli, Georg Friedrich

Handel, Claudio Monteverdi, Henry Purcell, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Antonio Vivaldi, but

the most famous of this Era was no other than Johann Sebastian Bach. He was on born

March 21, 1685. He was also known as “Old Back” for his reputation of being a very

serious person; it was given to him by King Frederick of Prussia. Bach had an amazing

musical talent, as a child he learned to play the organ and clavichord, he also sang in a

choir. He was a master at composing concertos, cantatas, oratorios, chorales, piano

inventions and other religious music. The F major and A minor piano inventions are very

well known to us today, for most of Bach’s life, his instruments of choice were the organ

and clavichord, but when he was sixty, he was introduced to the piano. When he found

this instrument he wrote a six-part fugue for King Frederick as a “musical offering.”

Later in his life he was stricken with blindness, and went through a surgery to fix it, but it

was unsuccessful and only aggravated his condition, as a result, he suffered a paralytic

stroke and died on July 28, 1750. The death of Bach marked the end of the Baroque Era.

Bach is considered to be one of the most influential composers of all time and is one

amazing man and the era of music he lived in and created was amazing as well.