BAROQUE MUSIC:

Babalola Emmanuel Oluwasegun

Organ Student of

Mr Seun Jacobs
 Baroque Music (1600-1750)

Baroque came to English from the French word barroque, meaning “irregularly
shaped.” At first, the word in French was used mostly to refer to pearls. Eventually,
it came to describe an extravagant style of art characterized by curving lines, gilt,
and gold.

Irregularly Shaped Pearl

The Baroque period of music occurred from roughly 1600 to 1750. It was
preceded by the Renaissance era and followed by the Classical era. The Baroque
style spread throughout Europe over the course of the seventeenth century, with
notable Baroque composers emerging in Germany, Italy, France, and England. This
period wasn’t limited to music alone, it features in things happening at that time like
paintings, sculptures, architecture which can be classified under Baroque art. The
term Baroque can refer to all of these art forms in addition to music.
Italian Baroque Church (St Peter's Vatican)

The Baroque period is divided into three major phases: early, middle, and
late. Overlapping in time, they are conventionally dated from 1580 to 1650, from
1630 to 1700, and from 1680 to 1750. The Baroque saw the creation of common-
practice tonality, an approach to writing music in which a song or piece is written in
a particular key; this type of harmony has continued to be used extensively in
Western classical and popular music. Popular Baroque musical forms include the
prelude and fugue, the cantata, the concerto, the oratorio, the sonata, and even
opera. Like prior Renaissance compositions, many Baroque pieces have religious
themes. Notable composers of the Baroque period are George Frideric
Handel, Antonio Vivaldi and Johann Sebastian Bach.

Characteristics of Baroque Music

1. Emphasis on dynamics: Baroque music uses terraced dynamics. This means

that the volume stays the same for a period of time, then there is a sudden
shift to a different dynamic level. There are no gradual changes in dynamics
(such as a crescendo or decrescendo). During the Baroque era, the pianoforte
(an early version of the piano) replaced the harpsichord as the primary
keyboard instrument. The pianoforte (called a klavier in German) struck
strings with felted hammers, whereas the harpsichord plucked the strings.
This meant the pianoforte could play both soft and loud, opening new
dynamic possibilities. Other new Baroque instruments, like the valve trumpet
and the violin, also had immense dynamic potential. Renaissance instruments
like the lute were still played, but they were eclipsed in popularity by more
dynamic options.
Musical References

I. Toccata and Fugue in D minor by Johann Sebastian

Bach, Halleluyah by George Frideric Handel, Gloria in
Excelsis Deo by Antonio Vivaldi.

2. Embrace of instrumental music: Prior to the Baroque era, a great amount of

music was vocal music used in liturgical settings. While Baroque composers
still embraced singing in the form of chorales, cantatas, and opera, rudiment
of music became increasingly popular. Some of the most renowned pieces of
Baroque music, such as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons or Bach’s Brandenburg
Concerto, are instrumental pieces

3. Ornamentation: Much like Baroque architecture and sculpture, Baroque

music embraces flair. Even the simplest melodies were often embellished with
ornamentations like trills, acciaccaturas, appoggiaturas, mordents, and turns.
Music by Johann Sebastian Bach are more detailed about how ornamentations
are to be played.
Musical References
I. This is Bach Style of Ornamentation
Basso continuo: Basso continuo notation became popular during the Baroque
era. This form of music notation includes a complete bass line, which is
usually played by a cello in a Baroque ensemble. A player of a keyboard
instrument like a harpsichord or piano then improvises chords using figured
bass notation. Solo organ players often play basso continuo notation entirely
on their own.

Musical Elements in Baroque

Prelude and Fugue

A Prelude is a piece of music that traditionally leads into something else,
common examples from the Baroque period being a fugue or a suite of
dances. Since the early 19th century a Prelude has more generally indicated a
short character piece, often with an improvisatory quality.
Fugue is a musical composition in which one or two themes are repeated or

imitated by successively entering voices and contrapuntally developed in a

continuous interweaving of the voice parts.
Opera
An opera is a play with music in which all the words are sung. Opera
was only for the upper class or aristocrats, but soon even the general public
patronized it. Venice became the center of musical activity during the
Baroque period. In 1637, a public opera house was built here. Different
singing styles were developed for the opera, such as:

 Recitative: Imitating the pattern and rhythm of speech.

  Aria: A character expresses feelings through a flowing melody.

 Bel canto: Italian for “beautiful singing.”

 Castrato: During the Baroque period, young boys were castrated before
they reached puberty to avoid the deepening of the voice. Main roles of
the opera were written for the castrato.

Figures Bass

Figured bass is musical notation in which numerals and symbols appear

above or below (or next to) a bass note. The numerals and symbols (often
accidentals) indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones that a musician
playing piano, harpsichord, organ, or lute (or other instruments capable of
playing chords) should play in relation to the bass note.

Passacaglia
 Passacaglia is a musical form that originated in early seventeenth-century
Spain and is still used today by composers. It is usually of a serious character
and is often based on a bass-ostinato and written in triple metre.

Musical References
I. Bach’s Concerto in D minor for flute, strings and basso continuo
II. One of Vivaldi’s most famous is The Four Seasons, four concertos
for violin, strings, and basso continuo (a supportive part often
played by a harpsichord or other keyboard instrument).

Significance of Baroque music

 Baroque music expanded the size, range, and complexity of instrumental

performance, and also established the mixed vocal/instrumental forms of
opera, cantata and oratorio and the instrumental forms of the solo concerto
and sonata as musical genres.

 It laid the groundwork for the classical music of the next few centuries.

 It is seen as a more sophisticated and intellectual style of music.

What distinguished Baroque music from other form of Musical Era

1. During the Baroque period, composers experimented with contrasting
musical styles. They were vastly different from the music of the Renaissance
period. Tonality was subdivided into two categories: Major and minor.
2. Throughout many Baroque pieces, certain characteristics played a vital part.
This included contrasts between loud and soft, solo and group, different
instruments, and timbres.
Classical Era (1750-1820)

Classical era music followed the late Baroque period of music. It maintained
many styles of the Baroque tradition but placed new emphasis on elegance and
simplicity (as opposed to Baroque music’s grandiosity and complexity) in both
choral music and instrumental music. It is mainly homophonic, using a clear melody
line over a subordinate chordal accompaniment, but counterpoint was by no means
forgotten, especially in liturgical vocal music and, later in the period, secular
instrumental music. It also makes use of style galant which emphasized light
elegance in place of the Baroque’s dignified seriousness and impressive grandeur.
Variety and contrast within a piece became more pronounced than before and the
orchestra increased in size, range, and power. The best-known composers from this
period are Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven,
and Franz Schubert;

Characteristics of Classical Era

1. A return to the formal structure of the Baroque era, with the use of themes
and variations, fugues, and canons
2. A focus on elegance, balance, and simplicity in both melody and harmony
3. A predominance of homophonic texture, with a single melody line and
accompaniment
4. A contrast of moods and dynamics within a piece
5. A use of diatonic harmony, with closely related notes and chords
6. A clear and steady rhythm, with a regular pulse and meter.

Significance of Classical Music

1. Is a repository of emotional knowledge and civilizational values.

2. Offers an emotionally uplifting experience.
3. Signifies cultural identity and a symbol of ethical awareness.
4. Provides an alternative to the modern world.
 5. Can reduce stress and anxiety.
6. Improves mood and sleep quality.
7. Increases cognitive performance and memory.
8. Provides a sense of social connectedness and belonging.

What Distinguished Classical Era from any other Musical Era.

1. Classical music emphasized simplicity and order through a philosophy based

in social change.
2. Classical music typically has a more formal structure while Baroque mainly
focuses on improvisation.

Romantic Era (1830-1900)

Romantic music is a stylistic movement in Western Classical music

associated with the period of the 19th century commonly referred to as the
Romantic era (or Romantic period). It is closely related to the broader concept of
Romanticism—the intellectual, artistic and literary movement that became
prominent in Western culture from approximately 1798 until 1837. Romantic
composers sought to create music that was individualistic, emotional, dramatic
and often programmatic; reflecting broader trends within the movements of
Romantic literature, poetry, art, and philosophy. Romantic music was often
ostensibly inspired by (or else sought to evoke) non-musical stimuli, such as
nature, literature, poetry, super-natural elements or the fine arts. It included
features such as increased chromaticism and moved away from traditional forms.
As a result, romantic composers broadened the scope of emotional content.
Music was expected to communicate to the audience, often by using a narrative
form that told distinct stories.
 Romantic composers prioritized the emotional or narrative content of the
music above its form, which is why they broke so many of the classical
composers’ rules. Romantic composers didn’t reject or break with the musical
language developed during the Classical Period. They used its forms as a
foundation for their work but felt unconstrained by them.

Characteristics of Romantic Era

1. Expanding forms
2. Increased dissonance
3. Program music
4. Organic unity
5. Concert life
6. Expression of more individual and emotional experiences
7. Use of new or previously not so common musical structure.

Significance of Romantic Era

1. Encouraged individualism and a serious connection with the spiritual.

2. Offered major opportunities for female composers.
3. Saw music as a means of individual and emotional expression.
4. Broadened the scope of emotional content in music.

What Distinguished Romantic Era of Music from Musical Era before it.

1. Encourage individualism and a serious connection with the spiritual.

2. Offered major opportunities for female composers.
3. Broke away from the old rules of harmony, melody, clarity, and simplicity to
create a new style of music.
4. Made music more emotive and overtly autobiographical.
5. Broadened the scope of emotional content and emphasized originality and
individuality, personal emotional expression, and freedom and
experimentation of form.

20th Century and 21st Century (1900 – Current)

The 20th and 21st centuries can only be described as free reign for
composers. Each period we’ve described up until the 20th and 21st centuries had a
general set of guidelines and characteristics that most composers followed. Over
time, composers have been pulling further and further away from rules and
restrictions into what is ultimately now a place of complete free reign. 20 th
Century and 21st Century can be broken down into even smaller periods:

 Impressionist: 1890 – 1925

 Expressionist: 1908 – 1950
 Modern: 1890 – 1975
 Postmodern: 1930 – present
 Contemporary: 1945 – present

Impressionist: (1890 -1925)

“Impressionism” is a philosophical and aesthetic term borrowed from

late 19th-century French painting after Monet’s Impression, Sunrise.
Impressionism in music was a movement among various composers in
Western classical music (mainly during the late 19 th and early 20th centuries)
whose music focuses on mood and atmosphere, “conveying the moods and
emotions aroused by the subject rather than a detailed tone‐picture”.

0iOne of the most important tools of musical Impressionism was the

tensionless harmony. The dissonance of chords was not resolved, but was
used as timbre. These chords were often shifted parallel. In the melodic field
the whole tone scale, the pentatonic and church tonal turns were used. The
melodies were characterized by their circular melodic movements. Notable
composers of this period are Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918) and Maurice
Ravel (1875 – 1937).

Expressionist (1908 – 1950)

The term expressionism “was probably first applied to music in 1918,

especially to Schoenberg”, because like the painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866–
1944) he avoided “traditional forms of beauty” to convey powerful feelings in
his music. Theodor Adorno interprets the expressionist movement in music
as seeking to “eliminate all of traditional music’s conventional elements,
everything formulaically rigid”. Expressionist music often features a high
level of dissonance, extreme contrasts of dynamics, constant changing of
textures, “distorted” melodies and harmonies, and angular melodies with
wide leaps. The three central figures of musical expressionism are Arnold
Schoenberg (1874–1951) and his pupils, Anton Webern (1883–1945) and Alban
Berg (1885–1935), the so-called Second Viennese School.

Modern (1890 – 1975)

The Modern Period in Western music history lasted from

approximately 1890 to 1945. As with Romanticism, Modernism is both a
historical time period as well as a philosophical aesthetic. In everyday
conversation, “modern” typically means current or recent. As a term
referencing music, Modernism was first used by critics to describe forms of
musical expression adhering to the radical changes happening at the end of
the 19th century and into the 20th century. Unlike the terms “Romanticism” or
“Classicism,” Modernism describes relatively few unifying musical traits, the
sounds of Modernism range from the wistful and bucolic, to the bizarre and
jarring.
 Modernist composers thus began to challenge what was possible to do
with music, experimenting with a variety of ways of constructing music.
Modernist composers saw themselves as the “avant-garde” or front-line
troops working to advance music through their sound experiments. Many of
these composers experimented with musical sound through timbres, rhythms,
and tonality. One of the few unifying traits of musical Modernism was the
rejection of functional tonality laid out by Jean Philipe Rameau in his 1722
treatise. Composers at the end of the 19 th century broke the rules of tonal
harmony to explore different sound colors, new ways of organizing sound,
polytonality, and even post-tonality.

Post Modern ( 1930 – present)

The term Postmodernism first came into use during the 1970s to
describe musical, artistic, and philosophical trends that began around 1945.
Postmodernist music expanded on the experimental trends of the modernist
period, but also acted as a reaction against those experiments, resulting in a
diverse array of compositional designs

The first is total control through compositional methods like Total

Serialism and Electronic Music. The second is minimal control through
deliberately randomized methods like Chance Music and, eventually,
Minimalism. The third path looks more to styles of the past and creates a
pastiche of modern and the olden, as well as to return to emotional expression
through music that would typically be classified as Neo-romantic.
Contemporary Period ( 1945 – present)

The Contemporary Music period is the period following the Modern

Music period. It is generally considered to have lasted from 1945 A.D. to the
present. Contemporary music is (in general) based on originality. Then
Contemporary artists use dissonances and tried to disobey “the laws” that
music had followed for many years. After the Romantic period, music began
to differentiate into many varying genres, and as a result contemporary music
as a term is used to denote the time period, rather than style. Contemporary
music also encompasses genres which may not be considered ‘classical’ by an
average person. Many of these are often reliant on the quite recent invention
of synthesised sounds or non-traditional scales and chords, such as jazz or
electronic music.

The music also contains non-western melodies and leaves out

romanticism. The Contemporary also introduces new scales as bases for
melodies (whole-tone, modes, and chromatic) and chord uses. Some common
characteristics, which are not always present and are not only specific to this
period, include:

 Fewer lyrical melodies than other periods.

 Dissonant Harmonies
 Complex rhythms
 Percussiveness
 Greater use of percussion,brass,and woodwind.
 Uses synthetic and electronic sounds
References

1. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/baroque-era-music-
guide#2cfPxVRQtb8arujP3ytj8z

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_music

3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_music#cite_ref-1

4. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_music

5. https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/four-eras-classical-music/
#:~:text=The%20Classical%20era%20(1750%E2%80%931830)&text=But%20the
%20Classical%20(big%20C,%2C%20Mozart%2C%20Beethoven%20and
%20Schubert.

6.
 Everything

has been orchestrated by

God
BRIEF HISTORY AND FACTS ABOUT JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

He was a German composer, organist, and harpsichordist, considered one of the world’s
greatest composers of music.
The name “Bach” means “brook” in German.
At age ten, Bach lost both of his parents.
Bach is recognized as the greatest master of harmony and counterpoint of all time.
Bach once challenged fellow harpsichord wizard Louis Marchand to a keyboard duel in 1717.
However, Marchand proved unworthy of the challenge and fled on the day of the duel. It was
said that Bach was too modest to speak of the event in his later life, and was perhaps a little
ashamed to have embarrassed young Marchand.
He wrote over 1100 compositions, including works for choir, orchestra, and individual
instruments, especially the organ.
He was born into a family of musicians, and fathered 20 children, several of whom were also
composers.
He never left Germany, and lived within a 150-mile radius of his birthplace.
He was arrested and jailed for requesting release from his position as court organist for Duke
Wilhelm Ernst.
Outside of his reputation as an organ virtuoso, Bach was not especially popular during his
lifetime. It took later composers like Mendelssohn to reignite interest in Bach’s compositions.
He was attacked by one of his students with a club.
He became blind after a botched eye surgery by the same doctor who operated on Handel.
Bach continues to be the most performed and recorded composer in history.

BREIF HISTORY AND FACTS ABOUT GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL

George Frideric Handel was a German-born British composer of baroque music1234. He was
born in 1685 in Halle, Germany, and had to play the clavichord in secret as a boy because his
father disapproved of his musical ambitions5. He moved to London in 1712 and became an
English citizen in 172734. He composed about 40 operas, 20 oratorios, and many other vocal
and instrumental works, such as his famous Messiah, Water Music, and organ concertos123.
He became blind in his last years and died in 17591.

A bizarre incident in 1704 might have seen Handel’s composing career cut tragically short
after a set-to with fellow composer Johann Mattheson. For reasons apparently unknown, the
two had a fierce quarrel in which Mattheson almost killed Handel with his sword, which
fortunately struck a button on Handel’s chest rather than the chest itself.
Handel was a hit in London, as evidenced by the very generous salary of £200 he received
from Queen Anne when he moved there in 1712.
Handel’s successes in London continued, and he was eventually made the musical director of
The Royal Academy of Music.
In 1711 the London stage was treated to its first ever opera composed specifically for it. The
premiere performance of Handel’s Rinaldo took place at the Queen’s Theatre in Haymarket.
During the first London performance of Handel’s Messiah, King George II stood up as soon
as the Hallelujah chorus kicked in – after that, it became traditional for audiences to stand for
this famous chorus.
When, after a life of tumult and incredible music, Handel succumbed to his afflictions in
1759, his funeral was attended by 3,000 people and was a huge state affair.

FACTS ABOUT ANTONIO VIVALDI

On the day of his birth, March 4, 1678, a large earthquake occurred in Venice. At age 15, he
began studies to become a priest and was nicknamed Il prêt Rosso, or The Red Priest. It is
speculated that this was due to his red hair, which was a family trait.

He was from a musical family and was taught how to play the violin by his father.
He suffered from a lifelong illness.
He was the most important composer in Italy at the end of the Baroque period.
He wrote more than 400 concertos for various instruments, especially for the violin.
The scores of 21 operas, including his first and last, are still intact.
J.S. Bach was a huge fan of Vivaldi’s music. He transcribed several of Vivaldi’s concerti for
keyboard, strings, organ and harpsichord.
His most popular work is the group of four violin concertos called “The Four Seasons”.
He was a victim of identity theft.
He was ginger.
He made a lot of money in his life, but died very poor.
Vivaldi relocated to Vienna at the invitation of Charles VI who died shortly after, leaving
Vivaldi with no one to support him. However, because his music had not kept up with the
times, he was forced to sell off his compositions in order to live.
Unfortunately, Vivaldi died a pauper and was given a simple burial. The master musician was
not even afforded music at his own funeral, only the peeling of bells at St. Stephen’s
Cathedral noted his passing.
Interestingly, the young composer Joseph Haydn, employed at the cathedral, had nothing to
do with this burial since no music was performed.