Download CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 29
Early Baroque Music
• Baroque: a term generally used to describe the art,
architecture, and music of the period 1600-1750.
Derived from the word barocco (Portuguese for a
pearl of irregular shape), critics applied the term
"Baroque" to indicate a rough, bold sound in music
and excessive ornamentation in the visual arts.
• Age of Absolutism: The period of Baroque art
roughly corresponds with what political historians
call the Age of Absolutism. The theory of absolutism
held that a king enjoyed absolute power by reasons
of divine right. The pope in Rome, the Holy Roman
Emperor, the kings of France and Spain, and, to a
lesser extent, the king of England were the most
powerful absolute monarchs of the seventeenth
century.
St. Peter's Square
Much Baroque architecture, art, and music reflected and
celebrated the absolute power of kings and popes, such as the
vast palace of Versailles outside Paris and St. Peter's Square in
Rome (text page 234). The music composed for such vast
expanses could also be grandiose. Composers in Rome wrote
choral works for up to fifty-three separate vocal parts, while
the opera and ballet orchestra at Versailles sometimes
numbered more than eighty instrumentalists.
Bernini's The Throne of St. Peter
Another characteristic of
Baroque art and
architecture is abundant
decoration. In creating his
Throne of St. Peter for the
interior of the basilica in
Rome, the sculptor Gian
Lorenzo Bernini filled the
vast spaces with twisting
forms that energize the
otherwise static
architecture. Composers
too created large-scale
compositions, in which
strong chordal blocks
support highly ornamented
melodic lines.
CHARACTERISTICS OF EARLY BAROQUE MUSIC
• Artusi-Monteverdi Controversy: A war of words
in print initiated in 1600 by the conservative music
theorist Giovanni Maria Artusi, who attacked Claudio
Monteverdi for breaking many of the established
rules of counterpoint. Monteverdi responded by
affirming that the text and its meaning were to be
held above purely musical procedure. He called his
new text-driven approach the seconda pratica
(second practice), which he distinguished from the
more traditional prima pratica.
• Doctrine of Affections: The doctrine according to
which different musical moods could and should be
used to influence the emotions, or affections, of the
listeners. A musical setting should reinforce the
intended "affection" of the text.
• Monody: Term to describe compositions for an
individual vocal line with accompaniment, such as
solo madrigals, solo arias, and solo recitatives. A
term derived from the Greek terms meaning "to
sing alone," monody simply reflected the attempts
of poets, scholars, and musicians to emulate the
music of ancient Greece by making the words
intelligible and enhancing their effect. The
emphasis on solo voice quickly led to the
emergence of the vocal virtuoso, the star of the
court theater and operatic stage.
A Lady with Theorbo
Basso continuo: commonly called "thorough bass" in
England, it consists in a bass line that provided a neverending foundation, or "continuous bass," for the melody
above. Early in the Baroque period, the basso continuo might
be played by a single solo instrument such as the lute or the
theorbo—a large lute-like instrument with a full octave of
additional bass strings (Fig. 29-4). Later, a low melody
instrument—such as the viola da gamba, cello, or bassoon—
came to reinforce the bass line, while a chord-producing
instrument—organ, harpsichord, theorbo, lute, or guitar—
played the harmony above the bass.
Figured bass: a numerical shorthand placed with the bass line that
indicates which unwritten notes to fill in above the written bass note.
Like a modern jazz pianist, the Baroque continuo player was to realize
(play chords above) a figured bass at sight.
Major and Minor Tonalities
In the course of the seventeenth century, two scale patterns, major (the
Ionian mode) and minor (the Aeolian mode), came to be employed to the
virtual exclusion of all other church modes of the Renaissance and before.
While earlier modal polyphony had emphasized triads only a second or third
apart, the new tonal polyphony of the Baroque tended increasingly to construct
chords upon notes a fourth or a fifth apart. In other words, in the Baroque
period, modal harmony gradually gave way to tonal harmony.
Instrumental Color and Musical Dynamics
• In the Baroque era, musicians privileged a great
diversity of sound. A variegated ensemble in which
a theorbo, viola da gamba, cornett, sackbut, violin,
recorder, transverse flute, bassoon, cello, and
harpsichord played together were not unusual,
while the early Baroque orchestra was not yet
dominated by the relatively new violin family.
Moreover, it is around 1600 that composers started
to specify levels of volume in the music, at first
simply writing piano and forte in the score.
• Setting loud against soft, winds against strings,
soloist against chorus, major against minor—all
these helped create the brilliant colors and strong
contrasts that mark Baroque music.
Idiomatic Writing
for Instruments and Voice
• Baroque music welcomes for the first time truly
idiomatic writing for both instruments and voice.
Composers recognized that the violin, for example,
can play a scale faster than a human voice can sing
one. At the same time, they wrote vocal lines with
starkly different levels of rhythmic activity and
ornaments that underlined the acrobatic potential
of the voice.