The baroque in European music historical significance was a period from about 1600 to around 1750. From early on, the music in the baroque turned away from Renaissance music . By replacing polyphony (multiple melodies simultaneously) in the song of homophony (a main vocal) to let the text dominate, creating operas , oratories , cantats and monodies , vocal music developed sharply. Early in the baroque, the modal scales were mostly associated with church music exchanged with tonal music . This made great differences both in sound and in the ability to compose more advanced pieces.

Non-clergy instrumental pieces were an innovation in the baroque. There was a big variation between them, from toccata , joints , preludier , ricercars and capriccio to canzonaer, suites, sonatas and concertos. The orchestra developed significantly in the baroque, and as the instruments became ever better, more and more were included. Instruments that hit the baroque include violin , cello , crosspie , clarinet , bassoon , obo , English horn and early versions of horns , trumpets and trombone . New boats in vocal and instrumental music were the development of the general bass , one of the first instances of handing the rhythm holding to an instrument. Where vocal music was gay, the instrumental music remained polyphonic, and counterpoint was often used.

Initially baroque music was dominated by Italian composers; Claudio Monteverdi was one of the most famous of them. Eventually Dutch, German, French and English composers came up with more. The music culture in each country varied from time to time between just using Italian music, inspired by it or creating or taking care of own music. The opera, for example, was first attempted in Germany by singing games before the Italian opera took over. English opera was a mixture of Italian opera and masque performances, and the French opera was characterized by much ballet and own techniques, for a long time ruled totally by Jean-Baptiste Lully . However, Italian opera became more popular and public-friendly through development in Venice and Naples.

Instrumental music also developed differently. In Italy, the violin became very popular, and the sonata was closely invented to showcase the characteristics of the instrument. Arcangelo Corelli was crucial to sonata’s success. In France, composers like Marc-Antoine Charpentier created French fairs and oratories, while the wonder child Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre wrote challenging cembalosticks. In Germany, Heinrich Schütz and Johann Hermann Schein introduced a number of new music styles. Samuel Scheidt , and later Johann Pachelbel and Dietrich Buxtehude had great success with organ music, both geological fairs and worldly toccata and fantasies.

The late bar had a huge development of special instrumental music. Under Johann Sebastian Bach , both the toccata, the joint and, in part, the imagination gave a significant development and popularity. Georg Friedrich Händel developed especially the opera and the oratories, Georg Philipp Telemann developed concerts, comic opera and a number of other themes, Antonio Vivaldi and Tomaso Albinoni were crucial to the further development of the sonate and solo concert, Jean-Philippe Rameau developed the opera in France and Italy and Domenico Scarlatti and François Couperin , along with Telemann, helped lay the foundation for the galant style that followed the baroque. The galant style and classicism rebelled against the baroque complicated style, and wanted gay music with simple bass walk and a more worldly focus.

The music of the early Baroque (1600-1630)
The early baroque experienced a number of musical changes. The transition from the Renaissance happened quickly with the focus on a homophonic song style where you could easily hear the lyrics. It was also when the opera was created, thus singing and theater was first tied together. During this period, the opera was mainly for nobility, while in the next Baroque period it was performed more and more often for most people. Shortly after the opera came the oratorium. It looked like opera, but had far fewer theatrical features. A third song style was the cantata, also the largely a baroque creature. It originally did not contain plays, but was a choir with soloists and some explanation between the pieces.

Another important difference between early barracks and renaissance was also that the baroque began the emergence of instrumental music and the increase in the number of musicians in a musical ensemble. This again caused major changes in the music, including the creation of the general bass, an improvised bass hall with certain chords in special places, and the transition from modal to tonal music. Organ music in the Netherlands and Germany also clearly evolved from the Renaissance. The baroque music thus placed greater demands on instruments, musicians and orchestras. It was also more advanced than previous music with regard to chromatics, harmonics, counterpoint and a variety of techniques other than renaissance music.

The instruments were essentially like during the Renaissance, but several of them, like the violin , became more important. The distinctive sound of the instruments was also taken into account, so that you would like to write melodies based on how the instrument sounded and used the distinctive sound of the instrument to portray moods or events. In addition, the music was also increasingly written in rhythms with tactics and rows, so that one became more predictable.

Early Instrument Instruments
While the violin had been around for a long time, it was in the early 1600s that it was used in “serious” music as in operas and ballets. This was how it competed with the game that had hitherto been preferred. The game belonged to a family that also included bass violin and double bass violin. The latter two may have been the predecessor of today’s double bass . Other instruments in the strict family included the French pochette , a kind of “pocket fiction” without forms and dreielire were used in the beginning.

There were several stringed instruments, usually in variations, like harp , lute , mandolin and cister . In blowing instruments, Sackbut , a predecessor of the trombone , was widely used. The Lutte was mainly reserved for French music, while the theory took more place in Italy.

Skalmeien, which had been developed since it came to Europe in the 700s, gained an all-tenor and bass version over the next nine hundred years. The Skalmeien was a double-blade instrument, and thus more related to the obo than the clarinet. It was the starting point for the baroque bob that came in the mid-1600s. In addition, both the crumb horn , zinc , crossflow and block flute were used. Percussion instruments such as pauke and taboos were also used. One of the most commonly used insturments, especially in the bass voice, was the clues for small rooms and cembalo for medium sized rooms. Large rooms were mainly churches, using pipelines .

Musical development
The transition from renaissance to baroque music was one of the major violations of Western music. The traditional style of song, prima pratica , was the vocal polyphony of the Renaissance (many melodies simultaneously) with interlaced melody lines. The new style, seconda pratica , emphasized soloism, clear text, distinguish between melody and bass line and interest in expressive harmony. However, the transition from polyphony to homophony was significantly in song, but not in instrumental music, where polyphony was important throughout the baroque.

The distinction between the first and second practices was defined by Claudio Monteverdi and his brother Giulio Cesare between 1605 and 1607, in response to the criticism of Giovanni Maria Artusi from 1600 on Monteverdi’s “unnecessary” breach of the rule of consonance and dissonance. Monteverdi’s answer was that in the first style it was the music that dominated the text, while in the other it was the other way around. Monteverdi was aware that the second practice did not replace the first, but was an alternative.

One of the most important introductions in early Baroque was the general bass . The general bass was a bass voice often played by two instruments, such as cembalo and cello. The listing for the general bass was limited to chords that could be played from time to time, but between the chords there was free melodic improvisation. By having a general bass that remained in place, this also provided greater improvisation for the melody instruments.

Tonality was also important. The Renaissance had largely been used by modal scale , based on the medieval church music. However, the baroque’s development in music became so demanding that the modal scale in itself was not good enough. Shortly after 1600, the transition came to tonal music , which opened for greater melodic freedom, including dissonance.

Another of the musical developments that occurred in early baroque was the affective theory, the idea that music could recreate emotions. Here, some of the affections were stylized, so that daring, high pitched and high pace symbolized joy, while sadness was deep pitched. Slow pace and dullness, often with dissonances and other emotions, were symbolized by combinations of melody, pace, instrumentation and toneeleie. It was especially Monteverdi who developed this in his operas and madrigues.

Already in the middle of the 16th century the romance was utilized well in Venice , but it was especially in the beginning of the baroque, with Giovanni Gabrieli with several that it really began to evolve. Gabrieli wrote special sonates , and was the first to consistently used the term about music pieces without song. The only sonatas were far from as developed as they became in classicalism, they opened in order for the composer to determine the degree of strength of the instruments. Gabrieli especially experimented with instruments playing in dialogue with each other, both instrument groups against each other, like strings against brass blowers, and internal blower groups or strings against each other.

The development of opera
The opera was discovered early in the baroque, but may have been inspired by pastoraldramas, madrigals and intermedios, all three a mix of drama and music. In addition, humanists like Girolamo Mei , who understood that Greek plays were sung in their entirety, important to the idea behind opera. Meise’s ideas were discussed in the circle of academically interested people around Count Bardi called Camerata Fiorentina .

The discussion was about how to perform poems, plays and plays melodically. In the Renaissance, Madrigals had previously been mentioned, but these songs were polyphonic, and it made it difficult for listeners to follow the action. In Camerata Fiorentina, monodies , songs were written for a singing voice with single accompaniment, often on stage, guitar, cembalo or organ created. With only one song, it became easier to follow the action. In addition, the phrase should follow the content of the text so that short notes and high tones characterized revelation and long tones and low voice guidance a more calm mood. First, it was especially Vincenzo Galilei and Giulio Caccini who wrote monodies, and the latter developed them to a large extent. The monods disappeared at the end of the early baroque period, but after spreading to many other European countries and inspired similar songs there.

However, the monos were singles singers, and music interested florentines discussed the possibility of completing a whole series of consecutive monodies. Even after Bardi moved to Rome, the discussion continued. Jacopo Peri wrote the first attempts on opera with Daphne (not preserved) in 1598 and L’Euridice in 1600. Peri also invented resitative , chanting of words that told the story and tied together the monodies (eventually the “arians”). The background for the resitatives was in a widely accepted theory that the ancient Greeks performed their poems halfway singing.

The opera began experimental, but it was with Claudio Monteverdi that the opera found its place. In his opera L’Orfeo , Monteverdi’s understanding of the balance between text and music in the two practices featured in the opera. He placed the musicians both behind and in front of the stage, and also on the page. In addition to having such a large orchestra, with up to 40 musicians, the music was characterized in part by dissonance, surprising chords and conscious use of sound colors. Monteverdi used to use trombones, which was unusual in worldly music at the time, to create the feeling of the underground, while the flutes created a more pastoral theme. The orchestra also played a more active role during the resitatives, where they accompanied the whole orchestra, often dramatically, to enhance emotions.

Monteverdi wrote several operas. Already the following year, L’Arianna came, which is almost not preserved. Then there are no known operas from him before Il ritorno d’Ulisse in 1640. In Florence there were also no operas in the early baroque, although some pieces were operating in the performance. Francesca Caccinis The liberation of the Roggiero dall’isola d’Alcina , from 1625, had a number of musical characteristics of the opera to Monteverdi and his contemporaries, including arias, resitatives, choir and opening infonia, but was referred to as a ballet . Something later, Rome took over as the capital of the opera, where the recitals became less melodic, while the Aries retained its melodic style. It was also in Rome that castrators sang the women’s songs. In Rome, among others, Stefano Landi was an active opera composer. He wrote both operas with religious and comic theme, usually at the same time as in Il Sant ‘Alessio or pastoral and Greek mythological theme as at La Morte d’Orfeo .

Towards the end of the period there was also a form of opera to Germany. Just like in Italy, the first opera named Dafne (1627), but it may have been a worldly cantata. It is believed to have been written by Heinrich Schütz , but only the libretto is taken care of.

Oratories and cantats
Just after the opera started spreading, the orienteers also spread . The oratories were inspired by religious madrigals and laudi religious texts on daily language. An oratorium (= prayer house) was a presentation of a Christian text or message, most often resembling an opera in that it had resitatives, crosses and dances, but it also had a narrator who read the Bible texts the action was based on on. The oratories were, however, influenced by worldly music, and as operas also had religious themes, the difference sometimes became that oratorians did not have scenography. Emilio de ‘Cavalieri , also active in the emergence of opera, wrote what is considered to be the first oratorium La rappresentazione di anima e di corpo (“The Preparation of Soul and Body”). Just as with the opera, variants of the oratories appeared in Germany. Again, Heinrich Schütz wrote the first German case, Resurrection History, in 1623. In Germany, “history” was used about the musical form, and the term “oratorium” was not found until 1640.

The cantats also arrived early. They were mostly crimes and based on either secular or religious texts. The worldly cantats evolved away from the religious. The religious contained an instrumental introduction, separate arias and resitative, coral sections and parts where the congregation would participate in the song. This cantat became the one that later struck among German composers like Johann Sebastian Bach.

Other church music
In addition to cantats, madrigals and oratories, there were also other religious melodic genres. One of them was the French counterparts . The motets were happy to share prima pratica , and thus inspired by the Renaissance, primarily Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina , Josquin des Prez and Orlando di Lasso . They therefore had the music as dominant of the text. Alessandro Grandi made use of opposites inspired by the monodies, and thus the motets became closer to secondo prattico since the melody became less dominant and the voice got more in the front. This mix showed Grandi especially when he was inspired by solo riots, resitative and lyrical arias.

Girolamo Frescobaldi was dominant in instrumental music. He became an organist in St. Peter’s church as a 25-year-old, and created a number of works for piano instruments, preferably organ. He wrote toccataer, capricioer and ricercaros for cembalo and organ, most often in church context. Frescobaldi was most famous for his tone language, which was characterized by the tension between the modality and the major / moll-tones that took over. This meant, among other things, that he played a lot of chromatic, but he was also concerned with harmonious instruments.

Also in Germany there was musical development and, among other things, Michael Praetorius had defined a musical transition with his corals and especially his music-theoretic Syntagma Musicum . There were especially three of his descendants, Heinrich Schütze, Johann Hermann Schein and Samuel Scheidt , who largely introduced Baroque music in Germany. The three, often called “the three S-er” known to each other and to Praetorius.

Of these, it was especially Samuel Scheidt who wrote organ music. Scheidt studied organ technology under the established organ champion Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck . Scheidts Tabulatura nova from 1624 is considered the first important German organ collection. Scheidt made use of the general bass and sound development, and in addition he wrote contrasted in the melody. Scheidt was especially active in fantasia pieces, and his organ music was of great importance for the development of the North German organ music at that time.

Johann Hermann Schein succeeded in mixing the modern and Italian with German coral tradition. Among other things, he added a decorative song to the singing voices and divided phrases into the different voices so that the Lutheran church music developed. He also added in later works with solo instruments and contrasted between solo parts and parts with all i. These works, both named Opella nova , set the standard for church music among protestant composers for a long time.

Heinrich Schütz was probably the most influential of the three. As a student of Giovanni Gabrieli and visiting Monteverdi, he had learned a lot about the use of sound and voice to get the best message. He borrowed Gabrieli’s major orchestrations, for example in the sacrament of Psalm David and Cantion , both religious songs in German and Latin, respectively. Schütz also wrote operas and oratories, but stayed away from pure instrumental music. Schütz continued to develop church music far beyond this period. Schütz became particularly famous for his ability to use several cows, as Gabrielli did, and to set up the cows against each other or soloists against the choir. This meant that he created dramatic experiences to highlight the text. Thus, Schütz can be safely placed in the second practice.

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