The Baroque Era 1600-1750 Flashcards
Created a culture of their own. Their music-making centered in the home, the church and the university group known as collegium musicum (which still functions on many campuses today) developed the comic opera and prose novel, which were filled with keen and witty observations of life.
Middle classes
Courts maintained elaborate musical establishments including opera troupes, chapel choirs, and orchestras. All art and culture served the ruler!
Absolute Monarch
The culture of the city - art lovers vied with the court in their devotion to splendor. Artist Peter Paul Reubens whose canvases exude a driving energy a celebration of life. His voluptuous nudes established the seventeenth century ideal of feminine beauty.
Merchant princes and financiers
Canvases were ablaze with color and movement. Artists usually functioned under royal or princely patronage, or like Johann Sebastian Bach, they might be employed by a church or city administration. In all cases artists were in direct contact with their public. A musical work or art was frequently created for a specific occasion - an opera for a royal wedding, a cantata for a religious service - and for immediate use. The composer wrote for a particular place and time, but the great ones created for the ages.
Artists
Kepler, Galileo and Copernicus in physics and astronomy
Descartes in mathematics
Spinoza in philosophy
William Harvey in medicine explained the circulation of blood
Sir Isaac Newton formulated the theory of gravity
An age of reason
A devout period - religion was rallying cry of some of the bloodiest battlefields in history
Protestantism in England, Scandinavia, Holland, and north Germany.
Catholics - France and Spain - fought one another and their Protestant foes
American colonies - Protestant refugees based their new society on religious principles
John Milton wrote paradise lost - the poetic epic of Protestantism.
Martin luther’s reform
Religion
A style in which the single melody stood out - “one song” music for one singer with instrumental accompaniment
Monody
A group of writers, artists, and musicians whose aim was to resurrect the musical - dramatic art of Ancient Greece. Their idea was that music must heighten the emotional power of the text. Soon realized that this could by applies not only to a poem but to an entire drama. This was the invention of opera. Some regard this (inventions of opera) as the single most important achievement of baroque music.
Camerata
Bass accompaniment with chords filled in above
Basso continuo so
Moved from major to minor and back again
Major-minor tonality
Modulation from home key to contrasting key and back became an important element in musical structure
Tonic and dominant
Enabled Bach to write in all twelve major and twelve minor keys. “The well-tempered clavier” - a two volume collection containing twenty four preludes and fugues, or one in every possible key
Equal temperament tuning adjustment
Baroque musicians used dissonant chords for emotional intensity and color
Dissonance
Regular accent. The steady pulsation never slackens until the goal is reached. This gives baroque music its unflagging drive. Rhythm pervaded the musical conception of the baroque, and helped it capture the drive and movement of a dramatic era.
Vigorous rhythm
Heightened the impact of the words. A movement may start with a striking musical figure that then spins out ceaselessly. Wide leaps and the use of chromatic tones helped create a melody that was extremely expressive.
Continuous melody
