Our broad look at art and music is now complete. I've tried to define and introduce them to the best of my ability, and now ... it's time to delve deeper into music, to see what we can learn, and discover how it has evolved.
And music has evolved. Although perhaps that should be worded, musical tastes have evolved. Music has technically remained the same. It has always been the people that have changed, made new discoveries, and found what music was underneath the teachings of their time. It was people that broke the rules of music that they had been taught to unearth newer music beyond them. And I think you will see, as we advance through the years, that each period of musical history is represented by new rules being broken, and new musical forms being born. You may not understand all of that completely now, but just keep it in mind. It'll be important.
Now before we get too far into actual composers, and I just dump you into a time period, I feel a little background information about what was happening in the world of music at that time is very necessary.
The word baroque was previously used to refer only to architecture, and wasn't used in a musical context until the year 1919. It comes from a Portuguese word, barroco, and means "misshapen pearl". When applied to music, it generally refers to a period spanning the years 1600-1750.
And it is here our historical view of music starts; just about 400 years ago, in Florence, Italy, at the house of Count Giovanni de' Bardi. It is here that a group of intellectuals and artists gathered themselves to discuss the arts and sciences, and it is here, historians say, the Baroque period of music was begun.
The Florentine Camerata, as the men called themselves, felt that the strict, complex, liturgical music of the time often overshadowed the text of the music itself, and they proposed a new style of music that had one, simple melody, and parts that supported that melody. Putting these words into action was a man by the name of Jacopo Peri, who wrote a work entitled Dafni. This, musicologists feel, was the world's first opera, and the starting point of many other new forms that typify the Baroque period.
Now along with the Florentine Camerata, other men had been thinking about their music more deeply. The previous period in music, the Renaissance period, had seen great advances in the way of polyphony, or multiple voices playing against each other. But now, we find composers are beginning to peak behind the common thinking of the time to discover what lies beyond just moving lines of music.
Before we go any further, let me try to give you an idea of Renaissance music, and the general music of this time. Just think horizontal. A great deal of music then was written for religious purposes, which meant it was music to be sung. This in turn meant that music had to have many, separate, singable lines, for the various parts of the choir. This, finally, meant that music was generally made up of individual lines; lines moving horizontally, independent of each other. Now they weren't fully independent, obviously, because each line had to harmonize with the others, but the general bent in this time was toward the horizontal, linear side of music.
But now we see a shift taking place. Gradually the scales are tipping and composers are beginning to toy with the vertical side of music, music made up not only of notes, but of chords. This can be seen in the addition of a basso continuo, or a chorded bass line, that became a staple of Baroque music. (You can almost always tell if a piece is Baroque by listening for a cello or double-bass playing a bass line and a harpsichord filling it in with chords.)
Also, we begin to see a greater production of instruments themselves, and keyboard instruments are becoming fashionable. New techniques of playing instruments are discovered, like pizzicato and tremolo, and the need for that single, solo melody gives birth to the musical forms of the concerto (a piece for a solo instrument with orchestra for accompaniment) and the aria (a piece for solo voice with orchestral accompaniment). In fact, it is during the Baroque period that the orchestra is really first organized, and composers begin to write more specifically for certain instruments, rather than leave choices for the performers as to what instruments should be used.
Dance suites, large works made up of several, smaller "dances" are now common, and contain forms such as the gavotte and rigaudon. People are beginning to see the artistic quality of music, and virtuoso passages, like the cadenza, are being added to the solo repertoire. It is also in the this time that the fugue, a musical form where a melody is played over itself many times at different intervals, is born. The fugue is perhaps the most identifiable contribution the Baroque period made in the way of musical forms.
Names like Corelli, Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, and Telemann are the most talked about names through the Baroque period. But many, many composers have lived during these years, and each began to see that a slightly greater emphasis on the vertical side of music could be used to great advantage. The concepts of melody and harmony are beginning to grow.
All of these things took place during the exciting 150 years that were the Baroque period. As you can see, many changes were made during this time. But perhaps the greatest, most far reaching change was that of the small, slight shift from straight polyphonic writing into more chordal based music. The rules of the Renaissance were, as I said, still being studied and applied during this time, but people were beginning to think about just how their musical lines were interacting to build harmonies. The shift was slight, but just enough to have a profound impact on the music to come.
Well that's my introduction to the Baroque era. Hopefully, this has made you eager to get into the works and lives of some of the composers who lived then, and began to work such a change in music. I'll start it all off next post with the life and music of: George Frederic Handel.
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