Music has been part of the world’s culture for centuries. The changes that have been made throughout time influenced the newer cultures mixing older thoughts with newer developments. As technology and the human brain evolved, music and its style also evolved and expanded to ideas that were originally impossible. Some of the most influential time periods and development towards modern music have been the Baroque, the Rococo, and the Romantic eras. The Baroque era was the start of large important musical concepts such as melodies and harmonies, contrasts with dynamics, and different instrumental sounds and tonality. Before the Baroque era, standard music was a single melody or many melodies that were played simultaneously by a single …show more content…
The style of the Rococo was relaxed and simplified forms of music in contrast to the music from the Baroque era. Today, the Rococo era was the connection between the Baroque and Classicalism/ Romanticism due to the simplification of melodies and expansion on harmonies. Some of the more popular artists during this time was an early Mozart, an early Haydn, and Bach’s sons. At this time, dynamics was becoming more common in composition and were expanding to create an “increased expressiveness” demonstrating the composer's work of art.(The Rococo Style) Composers were making full use of crescendos and decrescendos. Another style of dynamics is the sforzando. The sforzando is a type of dynamic used as a shock. The front of the note is played heavy and loud, but quickly drops down to a soft whisper in a short period of time. With the increase in demand for dynamics, instruments needed to be modified to give musicians and composers the ability to reflect dynamic contrast. In doing so, the clarinet and pianoforte were introduced during this time period because both helped the development of dynamics and instrumentation; the harpsichord started becoming obsolete due to the lack of control on dynamics. The orchestration also changed to include the new instruments and is similar to the modern orchestral setup that would make another drastic change in
As the late Baroque period morphed into the new period known as the classical period, technological advances and new compositional techniques and ideas created new opportunities for the musicians of the period. The changes allowed for new performance techniques, forms, performance venues, and newly available compositional orchestrations to be improved and evolved into something new and improved for the new period.
The composers and their works gave definition to their time eras from the free-form ways of the Modern era to the concrete more formal structure of the Baroque period. Each composer brings a new aspect to their time and brings further value to the music, creativity and knowledge of their time periods.
The term sonata was used during the Early Baroque to denote musical works to be played instead of sung (cantata). Sonatas were usually played by a small number of instruments, anywhere from three to a small group of maybe six or eight. These groups were called chamber groups because they usually performed in small spaces, typically rooms in aristocratic homes or palaces. This example illustrates a chamber group playing Bach's Air on the G String from the Suite No. 3 in D.
This book by John Rupert Martin is a good introductory book in the understanding of Baroque artists and their tremendous variety. Martin defines the Baroque characteristics, but only very broadly leaving a significant amount of room for the reader to make his own deductions. In general, Martin believes that the typical definitions of the Baroque are "too restrictive and hence likely to create more problems of classification and interpretation than it solves." Even the time of the Baroque is left open to the reader when Martin says the Baroque is roughly comprehended by the seventeenth century. It is important to note at the outset that this is only a convenient approximation; for epoch as a whole can certainly not be fitted into such a strait-jacket." This helps to define the Baroque much more generally as a gradual change which can much easily be noticed from the present than the past.
Classicism of the Renaissance has been replenished during the Baroque period. During the Baroque artistic period, the exploration of the fundamental components of human nature and the realm of senses and emotions were very crucial. The Baroque era was a very dynamic time that showed an abundance of radiance and color. Artists of this time are passionate and sensual. Their works were many times considered to have an overpowering emotional effect.
There are two distinct eras in music that have impacted it immensely throughout time. They are known as the Baroque era and the Classical era. These eras have helped mold and elevate music, building creative pathways that still hold a strong effect in present day music. The differences in both the Baroque and Classical eras are quite immense but they both hold equal importance to the history of music and are high in their overall influential worth.
The major classes of musical instruments used in the High and Late Renaissance include plucked strings, bowed strings, brass, double reeds, other winds, keyboards, and percussions (McGee, 1985). Lutes, drums, and trumpets were often used, but the instruments that were especially popular during the Renaissance include the bass viol, treble viol, viola, violin, tenor sackbut, cornetto, bass sackbut, curtal, tenor shawm, bass recorder, and harpsichord (McGee, 1985).
Baroque era covers the period between 1600 and 1750 beginning with Monte Verdi (birth of opera) and ended with deaths of Bach and Handel. The term baroque music is borrowed from the art history. It follows the Renaissance era (1400-1600). It was initially considered to be a corrupt way of Renaissance by conservatives. The dominant trends in Baroque music correspond to those in Baroque art and literature. Some features of Baroque art included a sense of movement, energy, and tension (whether real or implied). Strong contrasts of light and shadow enhance the effects of paintings and sculptures. Opera is one of the types of music in the Baroque era. It represented melodic freedom. Baroque era was usually referred to as the thorough-bass period. In early Baroque era no tonal direction existed, but experiments in pre-tonal harmony led to the creation of tonality. [1] Baroque genre included instrumental suite, ritornello, Concerto grosso and chant. There were important composers of the Baroque period such as Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Antonio Vivaldi William Byrd Henry Purcell and George Phillip Telemann. Starting in northern Italy, the hierarchical state -- led by either the urban bourgeoisie or despotic nobles -- replaced the fluid and chaotic feudal system of the middle Ages. [2] For this reason, some historians refer to the Renaissance as the Early Modern Era. Sculptors, building on the techniques of artists such as Giovanni Bernini (1598-1680), found ways to create the illusion of energetic and even violent movement in their works. Painters created larger and more crowded canvases. Virtuosity was used in all the arts. The arts became an important measure of learning and culture. Music moved from the science of number to an expressive art viewed as an equal to rhetoric.
To satisfy the middle-class amateur, classic composers supplied a ton of new chamber music for all imaginable combinations. The piano sonata became a very important form of chamber music, especially after being refined by Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. After 1765, the string quartet began to increasingly dominate the chamber music field.
Baroque art can be described as a “distinctive new style” in which artists embraced “dynamism, theatricality, and elaborate ornamentation, all used to spectacular effect, often on a grandiose scale”. Baroque art encompasses a vast range of art from the dramatic and theatrical Italian pieces, as the quote suggests, to the more simple and every-day life but still fabulous Dutch pieces. Baroque art can hardly be contained in one description because it describes so many types of art, in great part due to the religious, socio-economic, and political scenes of the time. Religiously, the Catholic Church was responding to the Reformation by creating dramatic pieces to invoke piety and devotion. Politically, monarchies and rulers were using commissioned art to emphasize their authority and their given right to rule. Socio-economically, the middle class was rising and therefore wanting to buy and commission pieces of art to boost their reputation and validate their status in the social scene. These three changes were extremely significant but can by no means generalize the entire historical context of Baroque art. Instead, they stand as specific examples of important reasons for the range and breadth of Baroque art.
middle of paper ... ... nce of the many pieces of art, this period raised the bar for detailed artwork. Through its passionate and ornate styles it influenced the Rococo period and other eras to produce even more extravagant and opulent art. Due to its popularity, it was adopted internationally and had many variations of styles. There were many great artists, such as Rubens, Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Vermeer, Bach, Vivaldi and many others that used their art as a way of raising social consciousness, exploited, and delighted the senses.
A time of exuberance and elaboration ushers in new patterns and cuts, along with creativity and fantasy which brought about a distinct societal issue called classism, as shown by European fashion trends. The style of Baroque is “characterized by formal redundancy, by the complexity of patterns, by the eccentricity of decorations, and by the textile sumptuousness” (vogue.com). From light and airy tints, to deep and earthy hues, the coloration of clothes gave this extreme period emotion and depth that strikes the eye, even today. Classism is a major factor and restriction during this era, reflecting the attire an individual wears. Regarding child-like garb to the working class, public could distinguish rank. Furthermore, society can differentiate the church and the nobility’s superiority. In Baroque culture, your status was visually depicted by the clothing you were able to wear. Garments impacted civilization for the duration of the Baroque age, just as is does in society today.
Music is a big part of every distinct culture, and over the years music has changed and developed in so many ways to be what we hear in today’s society. Music plays such an important role in traditional and nontraditional aspects of every single persons life. There is not one day that goes by where we do not hear a rhythm, a beat, or a melody. As we get older, knowing this history of how music was established over the years is an important base in understanding culture from around the world. The first period that music can physically date back to is in Europe from 450-1450 AD, known as the Medieval Era when gregorian chant and monophony thrived.
The Baroque era was the age of magic. Flat surfaces became three-dimensional and paint on plaster became alive. It was the age of masterful illusion. Nothing exhibits this mastery better than Baroque ceiling paintings.
This era is recognized by the creation of tonality, as well as the establishment of the opera, cantata, and concerto. Different from the classical era, this era featured a unity of mood, a continuous rhythm and melody, and a predominantly polyphonic texture, meaning that there were two melody lines, each fighting for the listener 's attention. The composers from the Baroque period were well-known for their extravagant, frivolous and bizarre usage of their instruments and their performances. The most notable influence from this era is in modern music especially rock music, because in rock music emotions are intense and the mood are usually unified just like the music from the Baroque period. Some artists and rock bands have adopted this bizarre style, for example Prince and Lady Gaga. Many rock bands were inspired by composers of this era such as Bach because of the intensity of his