Baroque

• Define some key features of Baroque music, including recitative, canon, ground bass and fugue

• Take part in a vocal improvisation task based on Baroque recitative

• Play several parts of a canon using staff notation, with or without letter names

• Compose a ground bass melodic ostinato

• Notate a ground bass pattern using staff notation

• Name some well-known Baroque composers and describe what musical features they were known for

• Learn a fugue part by reading staff notation, with or without note names

• Perform a fugue

Key Knowledge

To know that:

• A '’polyphonic texture means lots of individual melodies layered together, like a canon.

• Music in which very similar parts are introduced one by one to overlap is called a canon.

• Ground bass is a repeating melody played on a bass instrument in Baroque music.

• A ‘counter-subject’ or ‘counter-melody’ provides contrast to the main melody.

• A counter-melody is different to harmony because it uses a different rhythm as well as complementary notes.

• A canon is a musical structure or ‘form’ in which an opening melody is imitated by one or more parts coming in one by one.