Download Introduction to Music: Musical Forms

Introduction to Music:
Musical Eras
 Baroque Period:
The English word baroque is derived from the Italian barocco, meaning bizarre, or rough
and imperfect pearl, though probably exuberant would be a better translation more accurately
reflecting the sense. The usage of this term originated in the 1860s to describe the highly decorated
style of 17th and 18th century religious and public buildings in Italy, Germany and Austria. Later, during
the early-to-mid 1900s, the term baroque was applied by association to music of the 17th and early 18th
century.
 During the era of Baroque music, European civilization emerged to preeminence on the
planet, which was to endure into the twentieth century.
 The era of Baroque music was an age of spectacular progress of knowledge. It was the
age of the scientific discoveries of Galileo and Newton. There was a new and vibrant
intellectual, artistic and social atmosphere, which in so many ways signaled the birth of
modern Europe.
 The flourishing of an autonomous European culture also produced a musical language, which
we hear today as familiar. Music from the Baroque period is the earliest European music,
which we still generally recognize such as the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah.
 Most of the Baroque musical instruments and forms which evolved during the Baroque period
survive today, particularly as they were embodied in the most familiar European art music, the
music of the Classical and Romantic periods of the nineteenth century.
 The Baroque composer thought of himself as a craftsman rather than as an artist. Unlike later
European art music, a great deal of Baroque music was written on demand for specific
occasions, and musical scores were often treated with the care we would accord to yesterday's
newspaper.

Key elements of the Baroque
 The two most universal stylistic elements of Baroque music are continuo, also
called thorough bass, and ornamentation. Both involve the difference between
what the composer wrote down and what the performer played.
 The continuo, typically consisting of a harpsichord and a cello, provided the
rhythmic and harmonic foundation of Baroque ensemble. It was usually
written as a bass line with numbers under each note to designate the harmony,
much like a modern jazz chart, and the performers decided how to fill out this
"figured bass".
 Ornamentation is the embellishment of the musical line, with devices such as
trills, mordents and grace notes. Ornaments were rarely written out, and
often were not even indicated, but simply left to the taste of the performer.
 The Baroque Musical Aesthetic
 Baroque thinkers conceived of music as rhetoric, but they added to this a
rationalist belief in the objective, scientifically definable nature of the
emotions.
 Baroque composers used varied musical descriptions of a given emotion as
building blocks of a particular piece. Emotions such as of love, hate, joy,
sadness, anger, fear, or exaltation. Baroque musicians were not concerned
with expressing their own feelings and emotions, rather they sought to
describe with objectivity, feelings and emotions, which were distinct from
what they actually felt.
 The ultimate goal of Baroque music, a goal attained then as now when
Baroque music is properly performed. Composers' and performers' skillful
and accurate musical depictions of objectively described emotions did and
still do evoke emotional, feeling responses in its listeners. Baroque music stirs
"the passions of the soul". A distinctive feature of Baroque music is that each
piece (or single movement within a multi-movement piece limits itself to only
one of the emotions. Baroque thematic development is thus quite different
from the later Classical thematic development, which juxtaposed themes of
contrasting emotional content in the same piece.

Baroque Musical Instruments: The Voice
 The human voice is the oldest and, in some ways, the most natural of
musical instruments. The singing voice of Baroque singers was not the
natural untutored voice. Rather it was highly trained, and trained for a
musical sound which is in many ways quite different from that which today's
opera singers seek.
 Instead of the uniformity of tone color for which today's voice strives across
the vocal range, the Baroque voice accentuated the difference in tone color
between the lower and higher registers. Generally, the qualities most valued
in the Baroque voice were agility, purity and clarity, even at the expense of
the power which characterizes today's operatic voice.

Baroque Musical Instruments: Strings
 The principal ensemble instruments in Baroque music, as in all subsequent European art music,
are the unfretted bowed, string instruments of the violin family.
 Violin making reached its highest point during the Baroque period. Indeed, the best violins in
the world today were made then in Cremona, a town in the Po River valley of northern Italy.
The names of Cremona's great violin-making families, such as the Stradivari and Guarneri, are
familiar today because their instruments continue to be the most prized by our greatest
violinists.
 All the modern members of the violin family were available to Baroque composers, that is, the
violin, viola, cello and double bass. Baroque composers responded to the new refined
instruments with music that demanded great virtuosic and expressive skill.
 The Baroque period also inherited from the Renaissance a gamut of fretted, bowed
instruments. The most important among these was the viola da gamba, or gamba, an
instrument with the approximate range of a cello.
 The gamba was most often used as a continuo instrument, and it disappeared by the end of
the eighteenth century. There has recently been a revival of this instrument resulting from an
increased interest in the performance of Baroque music using the instruments of the period.

Woodwinds & Brass
 The main woodwinds, the recorder, oboe, and bassoon were common instruments during
the Baroque era. The recorder was the only one of these instruments, which did not survive
the transition to the Classical period.
 Baroque woodwinds were all made of wood, even the flute, and had few or no keys, unlike
their nineteenth century descendants. These instruments generally have a softer sound
than their modern counterparts.
 The main brass instruments of the Baroque era were the and french horn.
 These instruments in the Baroque period were known as "natural" trumpets and
horns because they had no valves. Valves, were a nineteenth century invention
which increased the number of pitches easily available to the player, caused a
revolution in the music that could be performed by trumpets and horns.
 Because of their technical limitations in the Baroque period, these instruments
were used essentially for orchestral color.
 Keyboards & The Baroque Orchestra
 The two principal keyboard instruments of the Baroque era, the harpsichord, a plucked
keyboard instrument, and the organ.
 The lute, like the harpsichord, was used as a solo and accompanying instrument and
enjoyed four centuries of favor, from the later Middle Ages until the end of the 17th century.
Although a primitive piano was invented during the Baroque period, it remained a curiosity
until the middle of the eighteenth century.
 The Baroque Orchestra
 The orchestra settled into a recognizable entity of instrumentalists in the 18th
century. It was much smaller in scale than the modern orchestra and generally
the musical scores were adjusted to accommodate the number of players
available.
 They were mainly, and sometimes exclusively, composed of string players.
Woodwinds usually played the same notes as the strings, but occasionally the
woodwinds and brass were given short passages for color contrast.
 Instrumental Music
 Most instrumental music was played in chamber settings during the Baroque
period, given the patronage of the aristocracy and the lack of public performing
spaces until the 18th century. Instruments were built to sound full and rich, but in
small sized halls.
 The full development of instrumental music, that is, music without a text and
with no purpose other than being listened to, was a particular achievement of
the Baroque era.
 Renaissance instrumental music did not stand alone, but rather
provided a background for singing or dancing. Baroque dance
forms, which evolved from Renaissance music, include the
allemande, gavotte, and gigue, each with its own identifiable
rhythmic individuality.
 The rise of the virtuoso style, easily recognizable in the solo concerto,
also served to enhance the importance of instrumental music.
Audiences loved to applaud virtuosity and improvisation, when
performers of the day, like today's jazz musicians, were expected to
fill out the score, offering their own extemporaneous creation.
Questions &
Discussion
1-What does the English word baroque mean and what is the origin?
Italian barocco, meaning bizarre, or rough and imperfect pearl
2-What are the two most universal stylistic elements of Baroque music?
The continuo, also called thorough bass, and ornamentation.
3-The embellishment of the musical line, with devices such as trills, mordents and grace notes.
Ornamentation
4-What are the principal ensemble instruments used in Baroque music?
Unfretted bowed, string instruments of the violin family.
5-What are the two principal keyboard instruments of the Baroque era?
The harpsichord, and the organ.
6-What was the Baroque musicians major concern when composing or performing the music?
Not expressing their own feelings and emotions, rather they sought to describe with
objectivity, feelings and emotions, trying to evoke those emotions in the listeners.