The Baroque Period

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The Baroque Period

The Baroque Period (1600-1750) was mainly a period of newly discovered ideas. From major new innovations in science, to vivid changes in geography, people were exploring more of the world around them. The music of the baroque period was just as extreme as the new changes. Newly recognized composers such as Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, and Monteverdi were writing entirely new musical ideas and giving a chance for new voices to be heard that were normally not thought of sounds. Their musical legacy is still recognized today, and is a treasured discovery of outstanding compositions being reiterated with every performance of them.

Baroque which came from the French word barroque and the Portuguese word barroco originally meant deformed and misshaped. In a sense baroque is an appropriate term to describe this new for of ideas in time. On the other hand, no real word can describe the richness of this time period. Baroque music, just like any other music, reflects the time period that it was written in. The baroque era opened with the Thirty Years War, which included the siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683, and ended with the development of independent nation states throughout Europe. The face of Europe was completely changed during the baroque period. Most music in the baroque era ended up being predominantly vocal, and its biggest factors were the opera and its styles. Most composers of the baroque period shared the same ideas of how their music should...

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