Baroque Music

The Baroque period runs roughly from 1600, when opera was born in Italy, to 1750, the year J. S. Bach died. The name is usually traced to a Portuguese word for an irregularly shaped pearl, and it was first used as an insult for art that seemed overdecorated. Today it is simply the name of the era.

The sound of Baroque music

• Basso continuo. A bass line played by a cello or bassoon, with a keyboard or lute filling in chords from figured bass. It underlies almost every Baroque ensemble piece.
• Driving, steady rhythm: a single pulse often runs unbroken through a whole movement.
• One mood per movement. A movement typically explores a single character, joyful, grieving or majestic, rather than contrasting several.
• Dynamic contrasts: loud and soft may change in blocks, especially through changes in scoring. This does not rule out gradual shaping by singers and instruments that can vary their volume.
• Ornamentation: trills, mordents and other decorations, many of them added by the performer.
• Counterpoint, from simple imitation to the fugue, alongside the new major and minor keys.

Forms and genres

Opera, oratorio (such as Handel's Messiah) and cantata; the concerto, both the concerto grosso and the solo concerto; the suite of dances; the sonata for one or two instruments and continuo; the prelude and fugue; the chorale prelude for organ.

Composers and works

Claudio Monteverdi, Arcangelo Corelli, Henry Purcell, Antonio Vivaldi (The Four Seasons), Georg Philipp Telemann, Jean-Philippe Rameau, François Couperin, Domenico Scarlatti, George Frideric Handel and Johann Sebastian Bach (The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Brandenburg Concertos, the Passions).

Instruments

The harpsichord and organ were the main keyboards; the harpsichord cannot change its volume with touch. The violin family, recorder, Baroque oboe, natural trumpet and lute were common. Instruments of the time used gut strings and, often, a lower pitch than today's A440.

Playing Baroque music on the piano

Keep a steady pulse, use little or no sustain pedal, articulate lightly (many notes are slightly detached), shape dynamics to the phrases and texture rather than assuming every change must be terraced, and treat the voices as independent melodies. The Periods of Music History worksheet compares the eras, and Ornaments through the eras shows how Baroque ornaments are played. Good first pieces: the Minuet in G and Bach's Prelude in C.