chapter 7: introduction to baroque art and music
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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
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