The Baroque And Classical Periods

Music during the Baroque period was diverse and composers began to rebel against the styles that were popular during the Renaissance. In the Baroque era music was driven by the text and the emotions behind it. Vocal and sacred music developed greatly during the Baroque period. During the mid-17th century the Italian phenomenon opera dominated most of the theatres in Europe. Sacred music was deeply influenced by the opera, contributing to the development of the oratorio and cantata genre. The opera, oratorio, and cantata contain musical similarities; among all three genres they feature recitative, soloist orchestras, and duet arias.

The Baroque musical period occurred throughout Europe from 1600 to 1750. The compositions during this period had certain characteristics. Some of these characteristics included unity of mood, continuity of rhythm and melody, and most compositions, in the middle to late Baroque period, included polyphonic textures (Kamien, 2011). Many musicians, such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Arcangelo Corelli, thrived during this period. They composed hundreds to thousands of compositions in various different musical forms and each piece holds the characteristics of the Baroque period uniquely. This paper will review the

The dramatic and rhetoric composition of the music gave the possibilities of generating new interests and the creation of a variety of sounds during the Baroque period. Some of the major characteristics of the Baroque music were;

The Classical time period, which spanned a length of seventy years, from 1750 to 1820, was very different in nature from its predecessor, the Baroque time period. The Baroque era featured works that were ornamentally elaborate, where the artists and composers centered their works on a big, bold style that was dramatic in its composition. Artists and composers transferred strong feelings of tension and emotion into their works and it was common for there to be some type of action or movement happening within the work. Those who lived in the Classical time period, valued simplicity and wanted to return to the ideals of the Greeks. Therefore, the Classical time period is characterized by clear structural clarity, simplicity, smoothness, and symmetry. However, though the works took a step back from the grand movement of the Baroque era, the composers and artists of the Classical time period did lay out a tuneful and elegant style in their music and art. Out of the Classical era came many renowned artists and composers, two of those whom are artist Sir Thomas Lawrence and composer Ludwig van Beethoven (“NYU”).

The term Baroque has been widely acknowledged as a period in Western European Art Music lasting for 150 years from early 17th to mid-18th century. The word itself is originated from barroco in Portuguese meaning “oddly shaped pearl”, which best describes the visual and details of the buildings existed during that period. Its flamboyant and ornate details of the building is what causes ornamentations and harpsichords to become an essential element of Baroque music. Bach, ornamentation, and harpsichord are few of the most recognisable elements of Western Art music during the Baroque period. Nonetheless, we all came to a second realisation that the Baroque era lasted for more than 150 years, meaning that it has its own remarkable history and

Renaissance and Baroque composers were faced with the task of creating complex pieces that express both human emotion and ideas. While this is primarily one of the main purposes of all forms of music itself, including genres today, in the 15th through 18th centuries, this was largely done through the musical composition of a piece rather than the lyrics. Composers utilized several different techniques in order to portray to the listener the purpose and meaning of the piece. Renaissance composers were focused on furthering the texts in music, fully developing the lyrics Therefore, the use of word painting, the musical representation of a literal word, phrase, or poetic image, is clearly seen in many pieces. Baroque music, with the

The scientific revolution is traditionally considered to be framed between 1543—the year of On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres by Nicolaus

From the ninth century up to the end of the eighteenth century Western music has grown from serious liturgy church music to a more enlightened and complex yet simple to the listener forms. There are four periods of music during this span of time that will be discussed, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance era, the Baroque era, and the Classical era that will describe how music has evolved during these time periods.

These ideas of contrasting musical forces stems back to Lully’s operas in which some of the dances contained a solo section for wind trio accompanied my the string section. At this time in Rome composers were focusing on the orchestral concerto, then later the concerto and eventually the concerto grosso. Although the composer Giuseppe Torelli who was a major figure of the Bologna school composed pieces for all there types of genres which included the first concertos ever published. He wrote concertos for trumpet, violin and six concerto grossi. Most of his concertos were written in the fast-slow-fast form which was inspired by the Italian opera overture, which then became the standard pattern for the concerto. By the late seventeenth century Italian composers all shared a common goal; to write music that was pleasing to listen to, emotional connective and a show case for audiences to behold the abilities and virtuosity of the

C. Opera – Drama that is sung to orchestral accompaniment, usually a large-scale composition employing vocal soloists, chorus, orchestra, costumes, and society.

Opera is the combination of drama and music. Like drama, opera embraces the entire spectrum of theatrical elements: dialogue, acting, costumes, scenery and action, but it is the sum of all these elements, combined with music, which defines the art form called opera.

First, in the baroque period vocal and instrumental music had the same importance, this allowed that the composers had a wide range in composition types. Some composers chosen more vocally style and others preferred the instrumental style, which generated an amount of balance in composition during this period. In addition, instruments were created with specific features to perform the baroque music, they presented a sound and form characteristic, they were built to sound full and rich, but in small-type-sized, mainly strings instruments. The bow and the technique to play this kind of music required a careful and distinct method which caused that its texture and timbre were unique and special for that era. The most representative instruments of baroque period were organ and harpsichord, however, in most of the compositions of this period strings, woodwinds and brass instruments were also used by the compositors, and these instruments were important for the baroque orchestra. Some instruments used in the baroque period were: violin, viola da gamba, lute, violoncello, oboe, bassoon and trumpet. Moreover, baroque orchestra was characterized as small number of instrumentalists, and it was form mainly by strings instruments with a few woodwinds and brass, which gave the colorful contrast in the orchestra, this was called chamber orchestra. On

The art form known as Opera, originated in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries in Italy. One of the first masters of this art form was Claudio Monteverdi. “Monteverdi believed that opera should convey the full range of human passions” (Fiero). One way that he accomplished this was through the use of pizzicato. Pizzicato refers to the plucking of a bowed stringed instrument, which produces a very different sound from bowing, short and percussive rather than sustained. When a string is plucked, sound waves are generated that do not belong to the harmonic series as when a string is bowed. This complex timbre is called inharmonicity

The baroque period of music commenced in the year 1600 and ended around 1750 (Fuller – “Baroque”). Its texture was mainly polyphonic (Fuller – “Classical”). Polyphonic means that two or more different melodies are played simultaneously (McComb). This provides an energetic rhythm, long melodies, and many ornaments. The most famous composers of this time period were Vivaldi, Corelli, Monteverdi, Purcell, Handel, J.S. Bach, and Couperin. Many new styles of music were introduced, such as operas, sonatas, oratorios, suites, fugues, and concertos. Orchestras began to develop, but it was not until the classical period when orchestral music was perfected (Fuller – “Baroque”).

The beginning of the seventeenth century marked the start of opera in Italy. The earliest opera manuscripts to survive are the two settings of Euridici by Peri and Caccini (Grout 43). Although Euridici is the first known opera, Peri and Caccini were both not considered the founder of opera, that honor was instead given to Monteverdi (Grout 51). The reason for this may be because Euridici is said to contain many imperfections including: “weakness of characterization, the limited range of emotions expressed, the lack of clear, consistent musical organization, and above all the monotony of the solo style” (Grout 49). Grout explains that Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo “represents the first attempt to apply the full resources of the art of music to opera” (53). La morte d’Orfeo was the first secular opera performed in Rome in 1619 (Grout 62). This marked the beginning of serious secular opera. Opera continued to