A COMPARISON OF BAROQUE AND CLASSICAL STYLES

Characteristics of Baroque Music

• Baroque music, as well as the popular art and architecture of the Baroque period, puts an

emphasis on adornment. Immediately following the Renaissance, Baroque composers were the

first to establish multiple instrumentation and use complex harmonies in their compositions.

Baroque music favored the harpsichord and other stringed instruments, while the Classical

period preferred the piano, brass and woodwinds. Baroque music also allowed for much more

improvisation than Classical music and featured many more opportunities for ensemble soloing.

Baroque composers were also the first to establish opera as a musical genre.

Characteristics of Classical Music

• Classical music is generally considered to have begun with the invention of the sonata. Early

Classical music was among the first to express two different moods by using sonatas--one more

lyrical and one more fast-paced--while Baroque music, and its predecessors composed only one

mood per movement. The Classical era also saw the emphasis on the piano as the main

instrument used for performing compositions. Classical composers are governed by many rules

of structure, most notably the evolution of the rondo style ABA or ABACA, as opposed to the

most common Baroque rondo style of ABACABA.

Time Period

• Baroque music predates Classical, though towards the end of the Baroque period there is a bit of

an overlap as it evolved into the Classical period. It is generally agreed that the Baroque period

began after the Renaissance in approximately 1600. Baroque style was the dominant force in

European music, art and architecture until 1750, when Classical music gained popularity.

Classical composers then dominated the Western musical tradition until the beginning the

Romantic era at the beginning of the 19th century.

Composers

• The most famous composers of the Baroque era include Bach, Vivaldi, Monteverdi, Handel and

Corelli. Vivaldi, a student of Corelli's, was a popular composer of the late Baroque period, and

among the first to canonize the characteristics of Baroque music, including the use of the rondo.

The Classical era was considered to be ushered in by the compositions of Haydn as he was one

of the first composers to develop piano trios and the sonata form, both of which distinguish

Classical music from Baroque. Other famous Classical composers include Schubert, Beethoven

and Mozart.

Harpsichord

The harpsichord, which we have already met in the Renaissance, came into its own in the Baroque period

and is one of the instruments most closely associated with this era in music. The instrument became much

bigger and more powerful in the Baroque era and could have two manuals (rows of keys). The way the

sound was produced – quills plucking the string from underneath – remained the same and so the

instrument was still largely incapable of producing dynamics. No matter how hard the key was pressed, the

sound produced as always the same volume. The harpsichord was one of the principal providers of a bass

line. In the Baroque era a kind of shorthand for harpsichordists was devised, called figured bass. This

consisted of a simple one line bass part written out, with a series of numbers over each note which told the

harpsichordist which chord and in which position to play with that note.

Clavichord

Despite the enormous popularity of the harpsichord, instruments such as the

clavichord still remained popular, although its soft tone meant it was generally

unsuitable for most of the ensemble settings which became popular at this

time. It was mostly used as an instrument in private homes, and could still

accompany a single voice or soft instruments such as a flute. It was a

favourite instrument of Bach and his son Carl Phillip Emmanuel.

Violin

With the new emphasis on melody in the Baroque era, the consorts of viols popular in the Renaissance were

soon superseded by a new, more soloistic instrument – the violin. The development of the violin family is

considered to have begun at the end of the 17th century. Although a baroque violin might look much the

same as our modern violins, if you look closely there are many differences. Firstly, the Baroque violin

doesn’t have a chin or shoulder rest. The fingerboard is a little shorter on the Baroque violin and is not

raised as high as on the modern instrument. The bridge also isn’t as high and there are no fine tuners on

the tailpiece. Some of the most famous makers of violins of all time were active in the Baroque era, like the

Amati family and Antonio Stradivari. Their instruments are still highly prized today, and can fetch millions of

pounds.

Viol (viola da gamba)

Viols were still played during the Baroque period, but

the arrangement of a consort, in which a group of

differently-sized viols played music together became

outdated, and it is only the bass viol, played as

a virtuoso solo instrument, that survived. At the end

of the 17th century a great deal of music was written

for the solo bass viol by French composers and

virtuoso players such as Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe

(c. 1640–1690) and Marin Marais (1656 – 1728). The

bass viol was also used a bass accompaniment

instrument in mixed ensembles with other

instruments such as the violin, flute and oboe. This

instrument was made by Kaiser of Düsseldorf, Germany, c. 1700. Flute

Wind instruments also became popular as solo instruments during the Baroque period, as well as finding an

important place in the orchestra. One of the most popular of the wind instruments was the flute. In the

Baroque era, it became very fashionable for noblemen to learn to the play the flute. In fact, Frederick the

Great, King of Prussia, became a very proficient performer and composer on the flute. His teacher was

Johann Joachim Quantz, who wrote a very important book on how to play the flute, which is still used by

players today. The Baroque flute has only one key, and is usually made of ebony or boxwood, with ivory

decorations. Unlike the modern flute, the bore of the Baroque flute tapers towards the end.

Recorder

The recorder continued to be played during the Baroque period, and a number of changes to the

construction of the instrument gave the Baroque recorder a sweeter sound, softer sound. Many composers

wrote specifically for the recorder, including Scarlatti, Schütz, Telemann Vivaldi, Bach, Handel and Purcell,

and the recorder was often used in operatic music of the period.

Oboe

The oboe was another wind instrument which gained great

popularity in the Baroque era. Like the flute, it was also usually

made of ebony or boxwood, and also had fewer keys than the

modern instrument. Most instruments either had two or three.

The instrument in this demonstration has three. You will notice

that one is a central key and the two others are on either side

of it. These two keys actually play the same note, and have

been duplicated so that the player could play with either their

left or right hand uppermost, according to his preference.

Today, all oboes are played with the leftt hand uppermost.

Even though these instruments had fewer keys they could still

play all the same notes as the modern instrument, but players had to use more difficult fingerings to

produce them so couldn’t play some combinations of notes very quickly.

Trompe Dauphine

Music was such an important part of life in the Baroque era that it can be found in all kinds of places. This

instrument, the Trompe Dauphine, is a kind of hunting horn and would have been carried on horseback

during the hunt and used to play signals to let the rest of the hunt know what was happening. As you can

see, it looks very much like a French horn, but has no valves and the player is holding it quite differently.

This kind of horn is very difficult to play because the player controls the pitch using only his lips. On the

modern French horn the player uses valves to help get the right notes, and on the classical hand horn the

player used their hand inside the bell, as well as a set of crooks, which are lengths of tubing attached to

extend the overall length of the horn, thus lowering its pitch. The player of the hunting horn is only able to

select notes from the harmonic series by altering the pressure and tension of his lips.

Classical Period

The Classical orchestra was relatively unchanged from that of the Baroqueapart from the trend towards

larger ensembles that carried on right through to the modern period; in the Classical orchestra this was

largely seen in an increase in the string section.

Out of the instrumental consorts of the Renaissance and Baroque, grew the various string, wind,

and brass ensembles that became popular during the Classical period. The most established of these

ensembles was the stringquartet, consisting of two violins, viola, and violoncello, for which many composers

wrote music. As Baroque ensembles grew into larger Classical orchestras the violin underwent a series of

changes in its construction to allow it to flourish in the concert hall setting, as discussed in the Baroque

section. The neck of the violin was lengthened slightly and set back at a slight angle, increasing the height

of the bridge and the pressure put on the body of the violin. With this increased pressure came a louder

sound, enabling the violin to be heard across large halls within a group and as a solo virtuosoinstrument.

Many surviving instruments of the time were altered in this way, and it is now rare to find a violin in its

unaltered pre-classical state.

One instrument that became a regular member of the orchestra for the first

time in the Classical period was the clarinet, which had been invented in

the early eighteenth century, but was popularised in the works of Mozart,

Haydn and other composers of the period. A type

of clarinet with extended range, the basset horn, was

particularly favoured in solo works by Mozart – largely

due to his working relationship with one of its most

famous players, Anton Stadler.

Larger and smaller ensembles of matched wind instruments were also common –

trios, quintets, sextets and octets – with a broad range of music written for these

ensembles. During the Classical period valves and pistons found on brass instruments

such as the trumpet or horn had not yet been invented. Instead the player had to add

sections of tubing, called ‘crooks’ to the instrument to make the overall tubing longer, thus lowering

its pitch. At the same time a technique developed on the horn, in which the player puts his/her hand in

the bell, altering the sound and allowing him/her to play more notes. You may have noticed horn players

with their hand in the bell before!

The piano gained popularity from the last quarter of the eighteenth century, as a solo instrument, for

song accompaniment, in chamber ensembles and with orchestra (although usually in this capacity as a

virtuoso solo instrument for concertos). Despite this, the harpsichord was still often used in opera

performances because of its particular bright and slightly percussive qualities that suited it to leading the

opera production.