Introduction to Baroque Music

Baroque era is dated to around 1600 to 1750, in broad general dates. 1600 was the year when the first opera was written, by Monetverdi. 1750 saw the death of maybe the best composer ever - Johann Sebastian Bach. What is baroque? Essentially a very highly ornated, decorated, detailed art, whether it comes to music or painting or architecture. The word stems from barocco, which is Portugese for irregularly shaped pearl. You should bear in mind though that the existence of a single style of baroque is absent in this period, and we therefore need to go through (in general terms of course) the works of different composers on their own.

First, Baroque music in general. It is characteristic for its steady, almost mechanistic, and accentuated rhythm. Many detailed and independent melody lines are flowing simultaneously in many composer's works. For some people such music is too busy and hard to listen to, because it is just so overwhelming with all these melodies running at the same time. And even with all these voices, the common listener might feel the music is not very melodic, simply because there is seldom THE melody line and THE accompaniment. No, baroque is complexity at its best, polyphony never seen before was developed and used. Baroque era is actually an era where rationalism was started to rule the world, with church authority diminishing. People like Newton, Galileo, Kepler, or van Leeuwenhoek were born to revolutionize our understanding about the universe. The complexity of the nature was reduced into systems that were individual per se and ruled together to run the universe. In other words, complexity was controlled by order and symmetry. This intellectualism understanding was of course reflected in the music - make it complex by using independent fine voices. Extravagant complexity controlled by order and symmetry once again. Sort of a paradox made to work.

To study a musical era it is usually suitable to compare it with the preceding era. Here then we can compare baroque and renaissance. And let's state an example with sacred music. As you may have heard already, the music of renaissance masses was very religiously and spiritually crafted, simple, not overwhelming but softly sinking into the ears to evoke meditative emotions. So, what did baroque had to offer the church? We might say total opposite in many aspects - a bunch of melody lines playing together, very complex polyphony, not really evoking meditative or spiritual feelings, and well, not really sounding like a religious sacred music but more like a display of virtuosity and intellectualism. To compare these two eras you can listen to renaissance masses by Palestrina, and compare it to the mass of a Baroque master J.S. Bach. You cannot avoid to notice the difference! It's like a meeting of The Beatles and Metallica. And not only sacred music changed, as you can notice by comparing the secular music compositions. For example, renaissance madrigals are known for the detailed adapting of music to the words of the text, and evoking not really much feelings so you could feel what it was all about. Now, baroque songs are really evoking feelings of sadness or joy, or whatever the composer wanted to convey. The text is more of secondary nature, here the music is the primary concern.

One big composition form during the baroque was invented in France, proobably in Versailles on the incentive of Louis XIV, by Lully - the court composer. However, this composition form was not only composed in France but was spread around Europe. French Overture has sweeping scales, majestic pompous rhythms, and 'swinging' notes; second part is followed by polyphonic more baroque-characteristic hallmarks of steady rhythms and complex melody textures. You can listen to some examples of French Overtures and hear these characteristics for yourself.

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