The Baroque Period

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Glossary - Click for a glossary of Baroque music terminology, musical styles, and famous Baroque composers.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Historical and Cultural Timeline - The Baroque Period (1600-1750)

  • The increasing importance of scientific investigation

  • The culmination of royal despotism

  • Development of the New World

  • Artificiality and marvelous effect were valued in the arts

Musical Context

  • A time of experimentation

  • Expanding roles for music

  • A growing awareness of national styles

  • The full equality of instrumental music

Wikipedia

"In the arts, Baroque is both a period and the style that dominated it. The Baroque style used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, and music. The style started around 1600 in Rome, Italy and spread to most of Europe. In music, the Baroque applies to the final period of dominance of imitative counterpoint, where different voices and instruments echo each other but at different pitches, sometimes inverting the echo, and even reversing thematic material.

The popularity and success of the "Baroque" was encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church which had decided at the time of the Council of Trent that the arts should communicate religious themes in direct and emotional involvement. The aristocracy also saw the dramatic style of Baroque architecture and art as a means of impressing visitors and expressing triumphant power and control. Baroque palaces are built around an entrance sequence of courts, anterooms, grand staircases, and reception rooms of sequentially increasing magnificence. In similar profusions of detail, art, music, architecture, and literature inspired each other in the "Baroque" cultural movement as artists explored what they could create from repeated and varied patterns.

The word baroque derives from the ancient Portuguese noun "barroco" which is a pearl that is not round but of unpredictable and elaborate shape. Hence, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is "elaborate," with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." (From Wikipedia)

Named after the popular ornate architectural style of the time, the Baroque period (ca.1600 to 1750) saw composers beginning to rebel against the styles that were prevalent during the High Renaissance. This was a time when the many monarchies of Europe vied in outdoing each other in pride, pomp and pageantry. Many monarchs employed composers at their courts, where they were little more than servants expected to churn out music for any desired occasions. The greatest composer of the period, Johann Sebastian Bach, was such a servant. Yet the best composers of the time were able to break new musical ground, and in so doing succeeded in creating an entirely new style of music.

Baroque Music

It was during the early part of the seventeenth century that the genre of opera was first created by a group of composers in Florence, Italy, and the earliest operatic masterpieces were composed by Claudio Monteverdi. The instrumental concerto became a staple of the Baroque era, and found its strongest exponent in the works of the Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi. Harpsichord music achieved new heights, due to the works of such masters as Domenico Scarlatti and others. Dances became formalized into instrumental suites and were composed by virtually all composers of the era. But vocal and choral music still reigned supreme during this age, and culminated in the operas and oratorios of German-born composer George Frideric Handel. (from the Internet Public Library)

Dance

Theatre

Dramatists of the Baroque Period - http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/2/10701023/

Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) Spanish novelist and playwright best known for his novel, Don Quixote.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English playwright and poet whose major works include King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night.

Lope de Vega (1562-1635) Spanish poet, playwright and novelist who, along with Calderón, dominated the stage during Spain's Golden Age.

Ben Jonson (1572-1637) English playwright and poet who collaborated with architect Inigo Jones on the production of masques for the Stuart court.

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-81) One of the leading playwrights of Spain's Golden Age, known for his autos sacramentales, one-act religious plays.

Pierre Corneille (1606-84) French dramatist and poet, one of the dominant figures in the evolution of seventeenth-century neoclassical drama.

Jean Baptiste Poquelin Molière (1622-73) French actor-manager and dramatist, one of the theatre's greatest comic artists.

John Dryden (1631-1700) Playwright whose heroic dramas, comedies, and tragedies dominated the English stage during the Restoration period.

Philippe Quinault (1635-88) French dramatist and librettist who collaborated with Lully on a number of large-scale operas.

Jean-Baptiste Lully (1637-82) Italian musician and composer whose career was spent in France, where he dominated musical life for three decades.

Jean Racine (1639-99) The leading tragedian of seventeenth-century France, his plays include Phèdre, Esther, and Athalie.

Stage Effects

Terms, places, and people you should know from the Baroque Period

  • Baroque - barroco

  • Johann Sebastian Bach

  • George Frederic Handel

  • Francois Couperin

  • Claudio Monteverdi

  • Antonio Vivaldi

  • Ornamentation

  • Opera

  • Instrumental Concerto

  • Harpsichord

  • Counterpoint

  • Dance Suites

  • Sarabande

  • Courante

  • Bouree

  • Gigue

  • French Noble Dancing

  • English Court Dancing

  • Louis XIV

  • Ball Dancing

  • Theatrical Dancing

  • Académie Royale de Danse

  • John Dryden

  • Jean Baptiste Lully

  • Jean Baptiste Poquelin Molière

  • Theatrical Specticals during the Baroque Period (scene change, trap doors, elevators, flying machines, sea scenes, effects)