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 in the middle bar (1630-1700)
Italian music dominated strongly at the beginning of the baroque, but soon German, French and British composers developed on their own. Instrumentally, it was developing a struggle between the broad-crumbled violin family and the eccentric gamfamily. The blowers also developed, especially the wooden blowers, more towards the way one knows them today.
As the music evolved, it became clearer that there was a distinction between worldly and ecclesiastical music. For example, the worldly music could be intended for room (“camera”) in the house, and the word ” chamber music ” comes from there. It grew different from both church and theater music, including opera. While fuge , preludium and toccata continued to be popular, riccercars and capriccioes became less common pieces for string instruments. Sonata developed strongly, especially under Arcangelo Corelli , and became one of the dominant music genres. Instrumental music was largely divided into two groups: Sonates and related genres or suites and related genres. The sons were less crew, while suites – stylized dances, concertos and sinfonia – closely related to superstitions, had far larger orchestras.
The opera was also more accessible to a larger audience, with the development in Venice and later Naples. The focus was increasingly on the songs and partly the scenography, usually at the expense of history. In France, ballet had long been dominant, but opera also came through the ballet. The French opera was heavily dominated by Jean Baptiste Lully , and after his death there was a death period in the French opera. England experienced something of the same; English opera came late in the period, had a short but great flowering period, especially Henry Purcell , and disappeared again at his death. German opera was more modest, but Reinhard Keiser managed to create some enthusiasm for the genre. Within church music, the pagan also came to Protestant countries, especially with Schütz as a contributor. Pasie became an alternative to the oratorium and the Kantates, and thus the vocal church music evolved.
Historically, British and German composers had a difficult background. The future Germany was a patchwork of more or less independent German states, divided into Protestant and Catholic areas, both of which were severely damaged during the three-year war . For Britain, Oliver Cromwell’s pietistic period and the relatively modest return of art and music during Charles II became a serious weakening.
Instruments
The development of instruments continued with a number of innovations. In the game between gambe and violin, the intermediary viola d’amore had its great time. It was part of the gambefamily, but was not played between the legs, like traditional gamber, but under the hook, like a violin. It usually had seven strings and seven strings. Viola d’amore fought for a long time with the violin about the attention, but the trend was in favor of the violin. One of the reasons the violin won was the innovations in Italian instrument production. In particular, the Stradivarius fiolin became popular, but before it was also Nicolò Amatisviolinists in great demand. The popularity of the violin meant that Italian composers created solosonater, triosonates and concerto, all to show the characteristics of the violin. Another battle in the Ironman family was between the gamble and the cello. After 1680 the cello was predominantly dominant in orchestras, although the game was still used as solo instrument until the late 18th century. However, the gamfamily won the battle for the bass instrument, when the double bass became among the leading instruments of the general bass along with the cembalo.
Within blowing instruments there was also a development. The skalmeien was replaced by a baroque bob , which had a bigger rent. In addition, the woodblower family got a new instrument, the chalumeauen. This precursor of the clarinet introduced single-face to nozzle as opposed to the oboe double pipe. The bassoon was also developed at the same time from the Dulsian in Amsterdam , Paris and Nuremberg .
Opera
The Opera had a huge development over the 17th century. Variation in resitatives and arias on the one hand and stageography and drama on the other made that many competing schools chose their own solutions. Of these, it was the Neapolitan school that dominated. Italy was a leader in the development, but also the French and English opera became applicable. There were also some German operas towards the end of the period.
Italian opera
In 1637 the first opera house in Venice opened , the San Cassiano Theater . It was followed by several opera houses. The opera was thus accessible to the general public. This also meant that the opera had to suit the taste of the public. One of the changes was therefore that the Venetian opera focused a lot on scenography, with flying angels and cavalry riding on the stage. Another change was that the aries gained more attention and came to the center. To some extent, this also resulted in the drama of the opera in the background. Leading opera composers were Antonio Cesti and Francesco Cavalli , both with particular Greek mythology as the main theme. The Opera had thus moved in a clear direction away from the starting point with the Roman and Venetian schools. Ariene was in the front, the restitutions became important, the orchestra was used to create mood, the scenography was essential and the theme was most often derived from ancient times.
In 1675, Naples took over as the leading operative in Italy, and remained dominant for a long time, partly because of Alessandro Scarlatti . In the Neapolitan school, the scenography and scenic instruments became less important while the song was further developed. The song came in the front, but in addition the melody became important, so that the story of the story was overridden. Thus, the Neapolitan opera had moved away from Monte Verde’s second principle. The drama, which was already in the background in Venice, was even more disregarded, and more or less was a loose way to get from song number to song number. Now women also had the opportunity to sing without exceeding the popularity of the castrat songs. You got primate mothersand the first uomos that were grown, and often the dramatic action of the opera could be interrupted by the fact that a primadonna sang a song she or he was especially famous for the middle of another opera, which made the drama even more difficult to follow. It was also here that the tendency to sing the lyrics was repeatedly established. The Napoleonic School Totally Endured to Christoph Willibald Gluck took a settlement against broken action, stranger arias, the drama in the background and the special treatment of primate mothers.
French opera
In France, opera was no major success despite persistent trials from, among others, cardinal Mazarin . However, Jean Baptiste Lully made a disastrous appearance.
Lully was originally from Florence , but moved as a young boy to Paris. There he helped build up both ballet and opera. Lully was eventually employed by King Ludvig XIV after his sister had used him as a violinist. Lully grew with the challenges, and wrote many humorous pieces and ballets. Eventually Lully collaborated with Molière, and they made comic ballets, mixed with dance, plays and singing games known as tragédie lyrique . As these basically intermezzoes – pieces placed between the acts in, for example, a theater piece – increased in popularity, they also became larger and more worked out. As Lully had very much success with the king and also on his own with his chamber orchestra, he bought the exclusive right to operas. Thus, there were no competitors to him during the period. In 1673 he performed his first opera.
Lullys French opera was characterized by carefully printed arias and resitatives, which did not allow much improvisation. He wrote the opera so they fought with French daily language. The only operas seemed separate from the Neapolitan opera, it was clear that they were also inspired by them. Lully also put more emphasis on the instrumental opening of an opera, which he renamed from sinfonia to overture. He had a slow-fast-slow division where the first slow division had a melodic, unanimous theme, the fast-paced part a fast, counterpoint melody and the last, and optional, the part often returned to the first part again.
The French opera after Lully made it difficult. Despite the fact that Lully was dead, groups found that his operas were to be recorded. This resulted in a very mixed reception of the opera to the descendants, such as André Campra , Pascal Collasse , Henri Desmarets, Louis Lully, André Cardinal Destouches, Marin Marais and Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre . It was also not for French composers that Louis XIV was influenced by Marquise de Maintenon , and cut out the opera during this period. In addition, Italian music had taken more over in the period after Lully’s death when he no longer controlled the music that came into the country.
English opera
In England, opera did not make an excellent start at the beginning. First, the country already had its own genre called masque , a form of singing with poems, where dance, singing and instrumental music came together. This had long traditions in England. Secondly, the opera was Italian and Catholic, while England was Anglican and had pietistic features. Third, all forms of public entertainment were closed for 15 years under Oliver Cromwell’s Puritanism. Only 15 years seemed modest in the big context, never caught the masquen, and many composers disappeared. Karl II took over, but he spent a long time getting back theater and music games not to offend anyone. Therefore, there was no instant return of masque or other opaque styles either.
When new English composers arrived, the opera was the theme, and John Blow became the first to write an English opera when he composed Venus and Adonis in 1682 . However, Blow was quickly surrendered by his teach boy Henry Purcell . Purcell’s first opera, Dido and Aeneas , became his most popular, but he also had success with The Fairy-Queen and King Arthur .
Purcell had learned a part of his teacher Blow, including making use of a limited crew of four. Otherwise, Purcell’s first opera is inspired by both the Masque and Lullys opera, introduced in England through Charles II in exile. The latter could be seen in the presence of dance. In return, Purcell also had elements of Italian opera, like many aries. At the same time, he was also inspired by John Blow and earlier English traditions. This applies, for example, to the presence of mode-style instead of the major diatonic scale, and to Purcell’s resitative, similar to Blows.
Opera in German-speaking countries
While Vienna flourished as an opera center, it was for a long time to count as a branch of the Venetian opera. The rest of the German-speaking areas were characterized by both the Third World War and the religious seriousness. There were few operas, and those who existed were singing games of religious nature, often with dialogue rather than resitative. The dominant opera composer in the North German territories was Reinhard Keiser . Emperor, however, wrote most of his opera in the next period, which was also dominated by operas by Georg Friedrich Händel and Georg Philipp Telemann . Also Johann Matthesonwrote operas, but his theoretical writings are more familiar than his compositions.
Chamber music and orchestra music
Chamber music was the worldly music meant to be played for a relatively large room, usually with a noble family. During this period this was especially true of sonas, cantats and concert tours. To distinguish between religious and worldly music, the Sonatas and the Kantates are often referred to as chamber sonates and chamber records.
In the 1600s, there was a clearer distinction between different sonates. In the beginning of the century, a sonate was only defined as “something to be played”, unlike cantats that are singing. Eventually, it became a term of a group of little parts, often dances, separated from music, the texture, the mood, the character and the tempo and tempo of time to time. As composers developed the genre, they were divided into specific batches, so that the sonate eventually became a multitudes work with clear differences in line with the affair of learning. Around 1660 there was also a divorce between chamber sonate and the church sonate.
Arcangelo Corelli was one of the leading sonata composers in the period. As the raging opposition to Schütz, Corelli did not leave any vocal music, while his instrumental music is possibly the highlight of Italian chamber music towards the late 1600s. Corelli was a very skilled violinist, and he utilized the possibilities of the violin to the fullest without the fact that it was overly virtuoso. His violin sons, triosonates and concerti grossi were spread throughout Europe, and he had a great influence on later violin composers.
In general, Corelli’s chamber sonates consisted of preludium, followed by two or three dances. Often the dances were tied together in binary form, that is, the first part goes from tonica to dominant , while the other went from dominant and down to tonika again. The bass line was almost an accompaniment, and therefore does not play an equal part, unlike his church sons. Corellis triosonates were mostly written to adapt lyrical music rather than virtuosity. He had the most songs in the middle class without high or low notes, quick parties or other challenges. None of the violins have a bigger role than the other. The solo sonata opened much more to virtuoso improvisation, but otherwise followed Corelli’s sonate form. There was a slight difference between church and chamber sonatics in the solosonates.
The cantatas had developed into the leading chamber music for singing in Italy, and especially in Rome. The cantatas, often written for the occasion and for a critical audience, were designed for a relatively small room without scenography, thus becoming an intimacy that invited to joke and elegance. It increased the demand for cantats that came as a result of the secured mission for both composers and poets, especially because more cantats were worldly, usually with pastoral love performed after dramatic techniques. The music was usually for two or some more singers with continuo, usually when cembalo. Alessandro Scarlatti wrote over six hundred cantats and dominated in that context. In particular, Marc-Antoine took Charpentierand Jacquet de la Guerre made themselves out of the cantats, and changed them in part to give them a more “French” style. For the latter, it meant, among other things, that she borrowed the overture, still several places called Sinfonia, from the opera. She had far greater success with her operatic cantats than with her opera. Jaquet de la Guerre also contributed some of the very few cases of French church cadres. An intersection between the cantatas and the opera was the serenade, which was halfway dramatic, for more singers and a little orchestra, and thus too big for chamber and too small for large concert halls.
The concertoes separated from typical chamber music as they were designed for a larger ensemble, where several musicians played the same voice. Initially, this crew was modest with music written, mostly overturning written by, for example, Lully, but towards the end of the 17th century more and more pieces were written for the orchestra written. They were given the common name concerto, which was previously used for vocal music. Of the three main types, orchestra concerto – with emphasis on first fiolin and bass line – was of less importance, while the other two, who played the difference in sound and used the orchestra more consciously, became far more popular. It included concerto grosso , where a small ensemble was set up against a big and solo concerto , with a solo instrument against the rest of the orchestra. Although Corelli was a violinist, he did not choose solo concerto with violin and orchestra, but rather concerto grosso, best suited to the music style in Rome. His technique where the big orchestra almost copied the little was much imitated throughout Europe. Most importantly for the concerto was Giuseppe Torelli , who perhaps wrote the first concertoes, and defined the fast-slow-paced theme taken from opera conversions. His northern Italian style was continued by Tomaso Albinoni from Venice.
Élisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre was herself one of the earliest children, and already very young she appeared in Paris and surrounded by cembalo. She was recognized both as a musician and composer. In addition to following Francesca Caccini’s footsteps and becoming the first female opera composer in France – albeit far from success, she became very well-known for her pieces of cembalo. She also wrote sonas and cantats, mostly with religious content. Jacquet de la Guerre’s cembalostocks were mainly suites, a new style of stylized dances, ie music pieces written in dance tempo, but most often not used to dance. The difference between suites and sonates at this time was the absence of joints and introduction, as well as the fact that rhythm and tempo variations were greater. However, they started la Guerre with twoccata , renamed to tocade in some of their suites, and she was the first to write toccata for cembalo.
Church music
French church music was influenced, as much in France, by Louis XIV. He was against fairs, and did not want anyone in his court to write them. Marc-Antoine Charpentier did not belong to the court and wrote fairs with great success. Charpentier used a wide range of instruments in the fairs, and since he did not have a lot of French fairs to copy, he also had great freedom in developing the ones he wanted. Charpentier also evolved over the years and succeeded in creating a balance between polyphony and homophony, choir and orchestra and introspective prayer and dramatic song. Charpentier also wrote oratories, often inspired by Italian and French music. However, French did not use the term oratorium, but instead motet, dialogue or canticum. This meant that Charpentier had great freedom in the design of oratories. Charpentier’s most famous piece comes from a motet that may well have been an oratorium, Te Deum .
The German church office was inspired by the Italian Cantonese, but also by Heinrich Schütz’s work. It found its way beyond secret skeptics who opposed opera-like elements in the church. The church candidates therefore had more lyrical and less dramatic songs. A distinctive form of church cantata is the coral cantatas. It was based on a hymn and processed all the verses. Often the coral melody was the basis for variations.
In the German-speaking areas, church music varied between Catholic and Protestant music and internally in Protestant areas. Within Catholicism, much was not spared to the glory of God, and for many occasions, as the Heinrich Ignaz Bibers trade fair to Salzburg’s 1100th anniversary, the six-member singers were sixteen singers and thirty-seven musicians, each with their own voice. In protestantism, there were two main directions, the orthodox, who wanted to use resources such as the Catholics, and the pietist who would save on such expenses. That is why, in protestant contexts, the Orthodox Protestants had the greatest development.
Heinrich Schütz had previously appeared as a talented musical dramatist, and in recent times he played an important role both in the oratories and in the pics he wrote, one in the spirit of the gospel after Matthew , Luke and John .
The Danish-German composer Dietrich Buxtehude shone on the organ, leaving behind a large amount of organ works within twoccata, preludium, joints and more. He had imagination, virtuosity and sophistication, and had the sense of improvisation. Buxtehude visited both Georg Friedrich Händel and Johann Sebastian Bach on their older days. Most of his great organ works are written in two-cascade form. A toccataform was a femsatser’s work with preludium followed by fuge number 1 followed by intermediate play followed by fuge number 2 and finally a twoccata. Buxtehude also benefited from a break as a musical instrument.
Buxtehude also wrote 120 preserved church cadres. These ranged from solo and general bass to six-voice with big orchestra. However, the cantats are most characterized by an early-bar style in keeping with Cavalli and Monteverdi. They have simplified harmonics and singable motifs in line with the second principle. Scheidt and Schütz also had an influence on Buxtehude.
Der Buxtehude belonged to the North German Protestant school, Johann Pachelbel belonged to the South German and Catholic. Pachelbel was especially active in Nuremberg. His organ music was inspired by Italian music, but at the same time also the melodious South German organ style with soft harmonies and singable melodies. The emphasis of Pachelbel lay on toccatas and fantasies, but he also wrote chamber music, including his famous canon in D .
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