Baroque notes

Renaissance Instruments

• Organized by family and by loud (haut) and soft (bas)

  • Winds

  • Plucked Strings

  • Bowed Strings

  • Keyboard

  • Percussion

Introduction to the Baroque Era

Baroque

• The term was coined to describe art of the period as bizarre (named in the 18th century)

• Art and Architecture became more focused on the dramatic than the orderly. Leading authors were playwrights like Shakespeare (1564-1616) and Jean Baptiste Moliere (1622-1673) and poets who wrote dramatic pieces like John Milton (1608-1674) who wrote Paradise Lost

• Sculpture moved away from representing humans as noble and instead showed the dramatic events of their lives

• Musically, the Baroque era begins with opera, a full sung narrative story, and continues with dramatic genres in instrumental, vocal, secular, and sacred music

  • Opera counterpoint in sacred: Oratorio 

• Baroque ornamentation extended into musical improvisation

Baroque Traits

• Doctrine of affections: Baroque musicians sought to arouse certain emotions in their listeners. Different key relationships (finally key centers), different chords within keys, rhythmic patterns (measures and time signatures), different tempi, all change a person’s affect

  • Larger works may contrast between sections, but not within

• Seconda pratica: Composers came to see the careful treatment of dissonance of the Renaissance as too controlled (they called this the prima pratica). Their desire to more fully express human emotion through music led to more free treatment of dissonance

  • Claudia Montiverdi

    • Write madrigals in Renaissance

    • Writes Operas in Baroque

      • Proponent of seconda pratica

  • Tritones on strong beats!

  • Text painting

• Basso continuo: the basso continuo was a popular method of accompanying various music. The bass line was loosely notated with the bass note and figured bass, allowing the continuo instruments (usually harpsichord, lute, or organ, with cello) would interpret those symbols, providing some level of artistic freedom to the musicians

Instrumental Chamber music

• Toccatas, fantasias, preludes- improvisational pieces for keyboard or lute

• Contrapuntal pieces for keyboard or chamber groups include ricercares (rich-er-car-ayes), capriccios, or fugues

• The Canzona, or sonata, borrows from the cantata and includes multiple contrasting sections, often in imitative counterpoint

Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643)

• Frescobaldi is among the most influential keyboard composers of the early Baroque, and his compositions serve as the model for later composers, including J.S. Bach

• His toccatas were improvisational pieces that could often be played on either harpsichord or organ (he served as organist at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome) and he instructs the player to vary the tempo according to the character of the piece

  • Toccata No.3 from his first book of toccatas for the harpsichord

  • Harmonically simple opening

  • Almost strictly left hand accompaniment to start, breaks into polyphony

  • Hands feel disjointed by tempo fluctuations

  • Using trills to extend cadences

    • Ornamentation that implies improvisation

  • Loose

    • Harmonically

• Ricercares and Fugues were commonly composed by Frescobaldi for the organ. This style of imitative counterpoint relied on the statement of a subject that was continuously developed in imitation, and may also use a countersubject

  • Ricercares: Each entrance is new musical material

  • Fugue: Entirely based on a subject

• His ricercare after the Credo from Mass for the Madonna is remarkable for its development of a subject that is highly chromatic

Johann Sebastian Bach

• Bach was born to a family of musicians in central Germany

• He received training at a Latin School in Eisenach and learned violin and received musical instruction from his father

• At the age of 10, Bach’s father died, and he moved to Ohrdurf to live with his older brother, an organist. He continued his organ studies in Luneberg with George Bohm until 1703, when he received his first position as organist in Arnstadt

• From 1708-1717, Bach was a court musician for the Duke of Weimar, then he served as Kapellmeister for Prince Leopold of Anhalt in Cothen from 1717-1723

• He then moved to Leipzig and became the Cantor of St. Thomas’s School and civic music director. This was considered one of the most prestigious musical positions in Germany at the time.

• Bach composed in ever genre of the time except for opera. He composed dozens of organ works, over 200 Lutheran chorale harmonizations, 200 church cantatas, 6 choral motets, orchestral music, and keyboard collections, in addition to his three major works: St. Matthew Passion, St. John Passion, and the Mass in B Minor

  • Passions are the story of Jesus’s death and end of life

  • Mass in B Minor was created because he realized he had the majority of a mass written. Finished and compiled the Mass. This mass shows evolution of his style

• Bach was a true working musician, and his compositions mirror his positions. While serving as organist at Weimar, he composed much of hsi organ music, and when he became concert master, he composed cantatas for the chapel

• While at Cothen. He composed music for domestic and court entertainment. In Leipzig, he oversaw music for 4 churches, and he churned out hundreds of cantats, his motets, and his major choral works

• His keyboard collections were composed due to his work throughout his life as a teacher, and were often meant to serve as etudes for his students

Instrumental Music

• Bach’s organ works are primarily for use within the Lutheran church service and include chorale settings for use in congregational singing, as well as preludes, fantasias, toccatas, and fugues to be played as service music.

• His music for harpsichord includes every popular style of his time: all of the styles listed for organs as well as sets of variations. His well-tempered Clavier is a collection of preludes and fugues meant to highlight the possibilities of playing the keyboard in the new tuning system: well-temperament.

• The Goldberg Variations (1741) are considered among the most advanced keyboard works before the golden age of piano in the 19 c

• The Brandenburg Concertos are a set of 6 orchestral works dedicated to the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721

Church Cantatas

• Church cantatas came about in the early 1700s as a method for setting sacred texts in a more elaborate musical setting within the lutheran service

• Bach’s Cantatas were composed while he was in service at Leipzig. COmposing for 4 churches meant that he needed to compose approximately 60 new cantatas each year. From 1723-1729, Bach kept up this blistering pace of composition, though only approximately 200 of his cantatas survive

• Each Cantata take its basis from a Lutehran chorale tune, an typically begins with a choral-instrumental fantasia and that tune, he has several vocal solo movements in their form or arias or recitatives, and ends with a choral harmonization of the tune

• Example: Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (Now come, Savior of the heathens), BWV 62

  • Imitative moments

  • Violas don’t stop

  • Instrumental parts take precedence over figured bass

King Louis XIV (R. 1643-1715)

Luois XIV was arguably the most influential European monarch in the Baroque

era, and his rule over France affected every aspect of French life including music.

In addition to building opulent palaces like the Louvre (rebuilt) and Versailles,

Louis established royal academies in various fields, including music and opera.

Music at the court of Versailles was primarily focused on dance forms, and Louis

himself was an accomplished ballet dancer. His commission of a book to create

notation for dance positions let to the coining of the term choreography and

created dance notation that was as important notation in disseminating and

preserving choreography.

Music at the court was split into three divisions: The Chapel, the Chamber, and

the Great Stable.

o The chapel musicians played for Royal Chapel services, Chamber

musicians played for indoor court entertainment, and the Great Stable

played for ceremonial events outdoors.

Jean-Baptist Lully (1632 – 1687)

Lully is the most prominent French musician of the Baroque era. He was born in

Florence but moved to Paris at the age of 14 and spent most of his life in the

service of King Louis.

Italian opera fell flat in France, but Lully figured out a way to adapt the genre to fit

French artistic tastes. Along with librettist Philippe Quinault, Lully combined

drama, music, and ballet into the tragédie in musique, or trágedie Lyrique.

Differences from Italian opera included the French air, which involved rhymed

couplets and was much less effusive than the Italian aria, and the inclusion of an

ouverture) or French overture)

The French overture became a standard convention in both opera and oratorio of

the later Baroque. It included such conventions as stately, dotted rhythms meant

to accompany the procession of important patrons, and a contrasting, using more

lively, imitative section.

Notes inegales and overdotting: Examples found in Overture to Armide (1686)

French Piano Music

French Keyboard music of the Baroque era was dominated by the lute and

clavecin (harpsichord). Well-known composer-performers of these instruments

included Denis Gaultier (1603-1672) on the lute, and Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet

de la Cuerre (1665-1729) and Francois Coupering (1668-1733) on the clavecin.

De la Guerre’s keyboard compositions are limited to two collections of

harpsichord works, but they demonstrate the influence of ballet music on the

French instrumental music of the time. Her Suite No. 3 in A Minor (1687) utilizes

the French convention of collecting several dance movements into a suite.

Dance movements included the allemande (“German”), a slower movement, the

courante (flowing) a mixed-meter dance, and the gigue (jig) a fast dance with a

rapid footwork.

English Baroque Music

After the Renaissance, English music became less influential for several hund

red years, partially due to the political upheavals that led to the increased

parliamentary power and limited role of the monarchy. British royalty had less

money to spend on music htat the French.

There were a few exceptional composers of masques, British musical dramas,

namely Matthew Locke.

The only fully sung-through dramas to have found

Italy

• Unlike England and France, Italy is not governed under a centralized monarchy at this time but is made up of multiple regions that are led by different rulers, all competing for the top musicians to be in their service so that they may show off their wealth

• Musicians, for their part, end up traveling a great deal between these different regions and exchanging ideas that lead to the codification of tonality, the da capo aria, and instrumental forms like the sonata and the concerto

Italian Vocal Music

• Vocal music in Italy during this time period was dominated by two forms: opera and the cantata

• As opera spread throughout the continent, composers, and librettists moved away from the freely composed style of Montiverdi and began to separate recitatives and arias based more on their relationship to the plot. Recit was used when action was taking place and arias were used for characters to reflect their feeling

• In the cantata, composers eventually codified the form of alternating recitatives and arias, two or three of each, for a total of 8-15 minutes of music. The solo voice was accompanied by continuo and the story was centered on pastoral love (similar to Medieval stories)

  • Like a mini opera I think

  • Continuo is cello and figured bass instrument (harpsichord or organ usually)

• Arias in both genres were largely dominated by the da capo form. The first section of an aria would be sung, followed by a section of contrasting music. The singer would then sing da capo (from the head, or beginning) with more ornamentation resulting in a ABA’ form

Instrumental Chamber Music

• Throughout the late 17th and 18th centuries, Italians remained the greatest composers and performers of instrumental chamber music. This was spurred in part by incredible instrument makers like Nicolo Amati and Antonio Stradivari

• SOnatas and instrumental concertos emerged as the leading genres in Italy at this time. The sonata became a multi-movement work in which the movements contrasted with each other, had their own movement title (the tempo marking or a dance title), and displayed their own “affection”

• The two main types of sonata were sonata de camera (chamber sonata) and sonata de chiesa (church keyboard)

• Though sonatas could be voiced however the composer chose, the trio sonata became the most popular, utilizing two violins (new instruments for the time combined with basso continuo (cello and keyboard)

• Arcangelo COrelli (1653-1713) was a leading composer of instrumental chamber music and many of the characteristics of his music became common in chamber music moving forward, including the interplay between the violins and the use of a walking bass 

  • Trio Sonata in D Major

    • Interplay between the violins

    • Walking Bass

    • Loves a secondary dominant

    • Two violins, cello, and harpsichord, grave (slow)

German Music

• In the latter half of the 17th century, German-speaking lands were left in tatters after the Thirty Years’ War, with nearly 300 independent political ruling entities. There were self-governing cities like Hamburg, and principalities ruled by the nobility scattered all over what is now Germany and Austria

• Most musicians were employed either at court or by the church, but cities also hired Stadtpfeifer (town pipers) who held the rights to perform all music within a certain city and trained apprentices under their tutelage

• Many cities also had collegium musicum, associations of amateur musicians who gathered to play music and sponsor private performance. The focus n music for civil occasions and amateur music-making led to a system in which most German composers were synthesizing Italian and French styles of music to be performed by these groups

Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707) (idk how to pronounce his name)

• One of the most renowned German composers of the time, and one with a lasting influence on German music, was Dietrich Buxtehude, an organist composer who spent most of his career in the northern town of Lubeck

• He drew from the Lutheran chorale traditions with his Chorale concertatos, a multi movement instrumental work based on chorale tunes

• He was also renowned for his organ compositions, primarily composed for Lutheran church services. Buxtehude’s Abdenmusiken concerts before Christmas were so popular that a 20 year old J S Bach walked over 200 miles to see him play

• The Praeludium in E Major, BuxWV 141 is an excellent example of Bustehude’s toccata style with improvisation-based sections alternating with fugal sections, and utilizing the full instrumentation possibilities of the organ

  • High intro before bass enters

  • Dominant pedal before PAC

  • Standard fugue

Growth in Europe

• Europe had been experiencing growth in its middle class for centuries by the turn of the 18th centuries. This growth led to the expansion of music education in schools, churches, and conservatories (originally orphanages that specialized in teaching music) and a massive market for music as entertainment and for personal enjoyment.

• In Italy, opera continues to reign supreme, with the genre evolving and expanding, opera houses continuing to pop up across the continent and even beginning to be constructed in the American colonies.

• Composers from all over Europe would come to Italy to learn how to compose Italian opera and then they would take that back with them to their own region where it would be adapted to their culture’s language and tastes

• Church music mirrored the growth in opera as wealthy patrons with religious convictions wanted the music of the church to match the grandeur of music composed for the public stage

Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)

• Most well-known composer from Italy in the early 18 c. He was a virtuoso violinist, music teacher, and composed vocal and instrumental music in most o the major sacred and secular genres of the day

• He was the music teacher at the Ospedale della Pietà in Venice, a strict boarding school of orphaned, illegitimate, or poor boys and girls. The level of music education at the ospedale in Venice was among the best in Europe

• Vivaldi had access to some of the top musicians in Northern Italy to compose for and present public performance as fundraisers for the orphanage

Vivaldi’s instrumental music

• Among his best-known works, vIvaldi’s concertos were composed to highlight the best solo players in his orchestras. Solo instrumental sections alternated with sections composed for the full orchestra

• VIvaldi’s form for concertos utilized three movements: a fast opening movement, a slower second movement in a closely related key, and a fast thor movement that returns to the tonic

• He wrote so many concertos in such a consistent form that the ritornello form refers to his style of concerto composition. Ritornello (returning) refers to the orchestra section of the music, and every time the orchestra returned it restated some of the ritornello music and could serve to establish modulations and lead to the final statement of the movement in the tonic

• The solo instrument episodes were virtuosic displays of talent

• Example: Concert in A Minor, Op.3, No.6; La Primavera from Le Quattro Stagione

  • Ritornello

    • Call and response

  • Harpsichord

  • Fast passage work

  • Squeaky Straw

  • Walking bass

  • Sequencing

Vivaldi’s vocal music

• Vivaldi’s vocal music often showed off extremely virtuosic singing on the same level of his violin compositions

• HE composed music for sacred services at the Osepdale, the most famous of which is his Gloria in D Major, and multi-movement work for the Advent and CHristmas season

• The work is set mostly for choir, but also includes solos and duets for soprano and contralto voices

• Vivaldi also composed operas that required exceptional virtuosity from both the singers and instrumentalists. ONe of his most famous, Griselda (1735), features the virtuosic Agitata da due venti

George Frideric Handel

• 1600 birth of opera

• 1750 death of Bach

• Born in Prussia in 1685 (modern day germany)

  • Died in London in 1759

• Father was a barber-surgeon and encouraged him to study law

  • He did for a year

• Child prodigy

  • Gave organ lessons by age 11

•  Composed 42 operas and 24 oratorios

• Synthesized national styles to create the English oratorio

• Messiah is an oratorio, which Handel created and established

  • COmposed 24 works

Baroque Opera

• Began in Hamburg as a violinist and harpsichordist before premiering his own opera, Almira, German-Italian opera

• Took several sabbaticals to Italy

  • Push toward extravagance, drama, and character rather than inclusion of folk melodies and numerous brief arias

• Championed funding the Royal Academy of Music

• Second residency at the Queen’s Theatre ended due to a political battle with the Opera of the Nobility

• Third company at Covent Garden Theatre was the object of xenophobia

  • Londoners didn;t like him because of prussia and italian influence

• Mentors and contemporaries (Kaiser, Telemann) were already fusing German contrapunctal styles with Italian virtuosity anddrama

  • Incorporated Italian language arias into German libretti

  • Blurred the lines between the national genres

Giulio Cesare

• Premiered in 1724 for the Royal Academy of Music at the King;s theater in London

Aria: V’adoro, pupille

• Da capo aria

• Starts with a strict performance of music

• Form

  • A: Adoration

  • B: Minor

  • A’: Ornament

    • Ornamentation Lahey established and codified during the Baroque era

    • Baroque trills start at the upped note 

• Being switch a celotpatra tur

Messiah 

• Composed in 1741

• Premiered in 1742 in Dublin Ireland 

• SATB Soloist, choir, and orchestra

• Basso Continuo

• Perhaps Handel;s most singing at work

• Elevated the role of the cohours

• Uses operatic forms of recitative and notes inegales Italian virtuosity and 

• Possesses several unique features that distinguish it from the early oratorio

  • Absence of named characters

  • Importance of chorus

  • Length and organization (narration t/0/ Plot DRIven Otre interesting fied

  • Other interesting factoids

    • Handel composed many of these movements to find particular singers 

Messiah part one Scene IV

• Colloquially referred to as the soprano recits

• Genre: Oratorio recitative and arioso

  • Recitative secco Dry, chordal, basso continuo

  • Recitativo accompagnato Accompanied, orchestra

  • Arioso Airy, from aria, blend between recit-aria

Messiah: Part two, scene 1

• Incipit: “All we, like sheep”

• Genre: Oratorio Chorus

• What technique doe sHandel present in the text?

  • Text painting

    •  All we like sheep

      • Everyone

    • Have gone astray

      • Leads away from tonic

      • German polyphony moment

    • We have turned (everyone to his own way)

      • Each musical line has its own direction and intention

Messiah: Part Two, Scene VII

• Incipit: “Hallelujah!”

• Genre: Oratorio chorus

• Texture: Homophonic/Polyphonic

  • Introduction vs. elaboration
    Back and forth

• Popularity and tradition

  • Church services

  • Christmas/ Advent

• One of the very few moments where trumpets are featured. Along with “The trumpets shall sound and “Glory to god”

• Everyone stands during the hallelujah chorus

Modern Messiah

• Rearranged and adapted by

  • Mozart

  • Marin Alsop

  • Messyah

Giulio Caccini

Background

• Contributor to the creation of Opera

• Born in Rome (1546-1618)

• Recruited by Medici family to sing and compose for court and wedding

• Recruited by Count Giovanni de’ Bardi for his court

Compositional Styles

• Transitioned from polyphonic madrigals to solo madrigals (monodies)

  • Monodies were basso continuo

• Mostly through-composed, some strophic

• Stile rappresentativo

  • Text painting

  • Chromaticism

Notable Works

• Intermedi fro Medici’s Wedding (1589)

• L’Euridice (1600)

  • Raced to compose and publish; one of the first monodies

  • Rivaled with Jacopo Peri

• Le Nuove Musiche (1602)

  • First stile rappresentativo piece

• Nuove Musiche e nuova maniera di scriverle (1614)

  • 29 monodies and basso continuos

• Amarilli, Mia Bella from Le Nuove Musiche (1602)

  • Based on Greek myth about a maiden named Amaryllis, fell in love with a shepherd, the shepherd only cared about the flowers she was picking. Didn’t want her, just the flower

    • She grew a flower from her own blood?

  • Solo madrigal

  • Basso Continuo

  • Sung by countertenor

    • Soprano male voice

  • Harpsichord and harp accompaniment

Denis Gaultier

Background

• Born in Paris

  • Between 1597 and 1603

• Died in 1672

• Referred to as “Gaultier de Paris” and his cousin played in England

Professional Life

• Leading Lute composer of the 17th century

• One of the first lutist to accentuate the difference qualities between major and minor

La Coquette Virtuosa from the Sous Dorien section of La Rhétorique des dieux

• Solo lute

• Syncopation

• Major key

• ¾, probably a dance

Prelude from the Sous Dorien section of La Rhétorique des dieux

• Notated without measures

• Based on Arpeggios

Johann Hermann Schein

Background

• Born in 1586

• Suffered a lot of tragedies

  • HIS HAIR

  • First wife died

  • 7/10 children died

  • Suffered tuberculosis, gout, something else

Accomplishments

• Introduced Italian baroque style to German music

  • Never left Germany

• Kapellmeister at Weimar

• Cantor at the Church of St. Thomas on Leipzig

  • Predecessor to J. S. Bach

Suite no. 10: I Padouana from Banchetto Musicale (Musical Banquet)

• Only strings

• Picardy third motion

• Still used a cello as a drone

Diletti Patorali, Hirten Lust

• Modern style of sacred vocal concerto

• Organ, oboe, sackbut, male and woman voice

• Starts organ intro

• Very echo-y

Johann Joseph Fux

• B. 1660

• Missa Purificationis

  • Composed for the feast of the Purification

  • 6 movement mass

  • Fux’s mastery of counterpoint

• Concentus Musico-Instrumentalis

  • Nine part-books

    • Seven partitas

  • Timpani intro

  • Very fanfare-y

• Kaiserrequiem (Requiem in C minor)

  • Emperor Charles VI funeral in 1740

  • Catholic Requiem mass

  • Voice+Strings+Organ (?)+trombone

    • Weird choice

• Gradus ad Parnassum

  • Codified the stile antico and stile moderno

  • Divided into two parts

    • Summary of the theory on Musica Speculativa

    • Section of his treaties

      • Instruction on counterpoint, fugue, etc.

Atonio Lotti

• B. 1667

• Wrote operatic works in Dresden after gaining popularity

• Operas, instrumental music, cantatas, masses, and madrigals

• Favored colorful theory

  • Chromaticisn, suspension, dissonance, modulation

• Miserere Mei

• Il Trionfo dell’innocencza

  • Operatic debut