Baroque Instrumental Music: Concertos and Fugues

  • Instrumental Music: Late Baroque Era
    • Ritornello Form Recap: Characterized by the orchestra alternating with the soloist being featured. The orchestra plays the "ritornellos," which are like a main melody that keeps returning.
    • Concerto Instrumentation: Typically featured an orchestra (small, mainly string instruments) and a harpsichord. The harpsichordist would sometimes play a cadenza (an improvised solo passage).
    • Cadenza: A solo passage, traditionally improvised, though nowadays often written out and available in sheet music.
  • Solo Concerto vs. Concerto Grosso
    • Structure: Solo concertos are structured identically to concerto grossos, featuring a three-movement format.
    • Key Difference: A solo concerto features one soloist, while a concerto grosso features a group of soloists.
    • Movements:
      • First and Third Movements: Fast, typically in ritornello form.
      • Middle Movement: Contrasting slow movement, often in binary or ternary form.
    • Historical Context: Solo concertos continued in popularity, while concerto grossos largely fell out of favor after the Baroque period.
  • Vivaldi's Violin Concerto, "Spring" from The Four Seasons
    • Composer: Antonio Vivaldi (a violinist, wrote extensively for violin, served as a music teacher at a girl's orphanage, known as "the Red Priest" due to his red hair).
    • Larger Work: "Spring" is one of four concertos within the larger work The Four Seasons.
    • Structure of The Four Seasons: Contains four concertos, each about a season. Since each concerto has three movements, the entire work consists of 4 \times 3 = 12 movements.
    • Program Music (Programmatic Music):
      • Definition: Instrumental music that depicts something (e.g., a story, poem, or scene).
      • Condition: Can only be considered programmatic if it is purely instrumental. If there are lyrics, it is not considered programmatic as the lyrics already convey meaning.
      • Depiction: Each movement of Vivaldi's Four Seasons depicts a poem about its respective season.
    • Detailed Analysis of "Spring" Movements:
      • First Movement (Allegro - Fast, Ritornello Form):
        • Orchestra alternates with the soloist (who leads the orchestra, characteristic of the Baroque era due to the absence of a formal conductor).
        • Birdsong: Depicted by the first violinist in the orchestra and the solo violinist (a "turfy" sound).
        • Murmuring Strings: Lower strings play an undulating figure, meant to evoke murmuring brooks.
        • Thunderstorm: Music modulates to a minor mode; string players use tremolo to depict thunder, followed by modulation back to a major key and the return of birdsong.
      • Second Movement (Largo - Slow):
        • Mood: Idyllic and pastoral, evoking a flowery meadow.
        • Scene: A sleeping goat herd.
        • Dog Barking: A two-note figure in one of the lower string instruments represents a dog barking.
      • Third Movement (Allegro - Fast, Ritornello Form, Compound Duple Meter):
        • Rhythm: Compound meters result in dance-like, lighter rhythms, depicting dancing.
        • Bagpipe Sound: A drone in the low strings, with other notes moving over it, creates a bagpipe-like quality. A drone is a sustained held note.
    • Popularity: "Spring" and "Winter" are the two most popular concertos from The Four Seasons, often heard in commercials and TV shows.
    • Influence: Vivaldi significantly influenced later composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach, who admired his musical ingenuity, particularly in concerto form.
  • The Fugue
    • Definition: A polyphonic composition based on one main theme (the subject).
    • Polyphonic: This is the only polyphonic work studied in the current context, making it a key identifying feature.
    • Instrumentation: Usually played on a keyboard instrument (e.g., organ), often requiring both hands and feet.
    • Voices: The four parts of a fugue are referred to as voices: Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass. These are instrumental parts, not singing voices.
    • Key Terminology & Structure:
      • Subject: The main theme or melody of the fugue.
      • Exposition: The opening section of the fugue where each voice states the subject (or an answer) successively.
        • Answer: A transposed statement of the subject. It can be a "tonal answer" (same key, different pitch level) or a "real answer" (transposed to a different key). To the listener, it generally sounds like another statement of the subject.
        • Countersubject: A secondary melodic theme that is played against the main subject. Once a voice finishes stating the subject, it often continues with the countersubject while another voice presents the subject/answer.
      • Middle Entries: The central part of the fugue, characterized by subject entries (where the subject reappears) alternating with episodes.
      • Episodes: Sections of new musical material that typically do not contain the full subject (though "false starts" or incomplete subject statements can occur).
      • Closing Section: The final part of the fugue, containing a final statement of the subject/answer or an episode.
    • Fugal Devices (Compositional Techniques): Used by composers to vary and develop the subject.
      • Augmentation: The subject is presented in longer note values, making it sound slower.
      • Diminution: The subject is presented in shorter note values, making it sound faster.
      • Retrograde: The subject is stated backward (from end to beginning).
      • Inversion: The melodic intervals of the subject are flipped (e.g., an interval of going up 5 notes becomes going down 5 notes).
      • Stretto: Subject entries overlap, meaning a new voice begins the subject before the previous voice has finished its statement.
  • Johann Sebastian Bach's Fugue in G Minor (from The Well-Tempered Clavier)
    • The Well-Tempered Clavier: An important collection by Bach in two volumes. Each volume contains a prelude and a fugue in every major and minor key.
      • There are 24 keys ( 12 major, 12 minor), resulting in 48 preludes and fugues across both volumes.
      • Prelude: A short, introductory piece that often sets the key and mood for the subsequent fugue.
    • G Minor Fugue Exposition:
      • Soprano voice states the subject.
      • Alto voice plays the transposed answer, while the Soprano plays the countersubject.
      • Tenor voice states the subject verbatim.
      • Bass voice plays the transposed answer.
    • Additional Musical Terms:
      • Pedal Point: A sustained note, typically in the bass, over which other harmonies or melodies change. It may temporarily create dissonances or non-chord tones.
      • Picardy Third (Tierce de Picardie): A harmonic device where a piece in a minor key ends with a major tonic chord. This is achieved by raising the third of the final tonic chord by a half step (e.g., a G minor chord ending as a G major chord).
      • Trill: A rapid alteration between two adjacent notes, often seen in Baroque keyboard music.