INTRODUCTION:

What is Baroque Music and when was the baroque period?

Derived from the Portuguese barroco, or “oddly shaped pearl,” the term “baroque” has
been widely used since the nineteenth century to describe the period in Western European
art music from about 1600 to 1750. Comparing some of music history’s greatest
masterpieces to a misshapen pearl might seem strange to us today, but to the nineteenth
century critics who applied the term, the music of Bach and Handel’s era sounded overly
ornamented and exaggerated. Having long since shed its derogatory connotations,
“baroque” is now simply a convenient catch-all for one of the richest and most diverse
periods in music history.
In addition to producing the earliest European music familiar to most of us, including
Pachelbel’s Canon and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, the Baroque era also greatly
expanded our horizons. The acceptance of Copernicus’s 16th century theory that the
planets didn’t revolve around the earth made the universe a much larger place, while
Galileo’s work helped us get better acquainted with the cosmos. Advances in technology,
such as the invention of the telescope, made what was believed to be finite seem infinite.
Great thinkers like Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke tackled the big questions of
existence. Geniuses like Rubens, Rembrandt, and Shakespeare offered unique
perspectives through their art.

European nations grew more and more involved with foreign trade and colonization,
bringing us into direct contact with parts of the globe that were previously unfamiliar. And
the growth of a new middle class breathed life into an artistic culture long dependent on
the whims of church and court.

What is the philosophy of Baroque music?

Although a single philosophy cannot describe 150 years of music from all over Europe,
several concepts are important in the Baroque period.

A belief in music as a potent tool of communication: 


One of the major philosophical currents in Baroque music comes from the Renaissance
interest in ideas from ancient Greece and Rome. The Greeks and Romans believed that
music was a powerful tool of communication and could arouse any emotion in its listeners.
As a result of the revival of these ideas, composers became increasingly aware of music’s
potential power, and cultivated the belief that their own compositions could have similar

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effects if they correctly emulated ancient music. As French humanist scholar Artus Thomas
described a performance in the late sixteenth century,

I have ofttimes heard it said of Sieur Claudin Le Jeune who has, without wishing to slight
anyone, far surpassed the musicians of ages past in his understanding of these matters
that he had sung an air which he had composed in parts and that when this air was
rehearsed at a private concert it caused a gentleman there to put hand to arms and begin
swearing out loud, so that it seemed impossible to prevent him from attacking someone:
whereupon Claudin began singing another air which rendered the gentleman as calm as
before. This has been confirmed to me since by several who were there. Such is the
power and force of melody, rhythm and harmony over the mind.
In 1605, the Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi actually defined a “first” and “second”
practice: in the first, harmony and counterpoint took precedence over the text; in the
second, the need to express the meaning of the words surpassed any other concern. In
the baroque, it is the spirit of the second practice using the power of music to
communicate that came to dominate the era.

The realities of patronage: 


Any discussion of a Baroque composer’s artistic philosophy should be tempered, at least
slightly, by the reality of their lives. In modern times, artists frequently earn a living
producing exactly the kind of art they are moved to create. Accordingly, we often think of
the artist and the degree of his or her artistic inspiration as the starting point for a work of
art. Throughout much of the Baroque era, however, composers only earned a living writing
music if they were fortunate enough to be on the payroll of a political or religious institution.
The musical needs of that institution, therefore, dictated the music the composer
produced. Bach wrote the number of cantatas he did, for example, not necessarily
because he found the form inspirational, but because of the liturgical demands of the
Leipzig church that employed him. When viewed in this light, Baroque music can provide a
fascinating window into history.

Early baroque music (1580–1630)

The Florentine Camerata was a group of humanists, musicians, poets and intellectuals
in late Renaissance Florence who gathered under the patronage of Count Giovanni de'
Bardi to discuss and guide trends in the arts, especially music and drama. In reference to
music, they based their ideals on a perception of Classical (especially ancient Greek)
musical drama that valued discourse and oration. As such, they rejected their

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contemporaries' use of polyphony (multiple, independent melodic lines) and instrumental
music, and discussed such ancient Greek music devices as monody, which consisted of a
solo singing accompanied by a kithara (an ancient strummed string instrument). The early
realizations of these ideas, including Jacopo Peri's Dafne and L'Euridice, marked the
beginning of opera, which were a catalyst for Baroque music.

Concerning music theory, the more widespread use of figured bass (also known
as thorough bass) represents the developing importance of harmony as the linear
underpinnings of polyphony. Harmony is the end result of counterpoint, and figured bass is
a visual representation of those harmonies commonly employed in musical performance.
With figured bass, numbers, accidentals or symbols were placed above the bassline that
was read by keyboard instrument players such as harpsichord players or pipe
organists (or lutenists). The numbers, accidentals or symbols indicated to the keyboard
player what intervals she should play above each bass note. The keyboard player
would improvise a chord voicing for each bass note. Composers began concerning
themselves with harmonic progressions, and also employed the tritone, perceived as an
unstable interval, to create dissonance (it was used in the dominant seventh chord and
the diminished chord. An interest in harmony had also existed among certain composers in
the Renaissance, notably Carlo Gesualdo: However, the use of harmony directed towards
tonality (a focus on a musical key that becomes the "home note" of a piece), rather
than modality, marks the shift from the Renaissance into the Baroque period.This led to
the idea that certain sequences of chords, rather than just notes, could provide a sense
of closure at the end of a piece—one of the fundamental ideas that became known
as tonality.

By incorporating these new aspects of composition, Claudio Monteverdi furthered

the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He
developed two individual styles of composition—the heritage of Renaissance polyphony
(prima pratica) and the new basso continuo technique of the Baroque (seconda pratica).
With basso continuo, a small group of musicians would play the bassline and the chords
which formed the accompaniment for a melody. The basso continuo group would typically
use one or more keyboard players and a lute player who would play the bassline and
improvise the chords and several bass instruments (e.g., bass violin, cello, double bass)
which would play the bassline. With the writing of the operas L'Orfeo and L'incoronazione
di Poppea among others, Monteverdi brought considerable attention to this new genre.

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Middle baroque music (1630–1680)
The rise of the centralized court is one of the economic and political features of what
is often labelled the Age of Absolutism, personified by Louis XIV of France. The style of
palace, and the court system of manners and arts he fostered became the model for the
rest of Europe. The realities of rising church and state patronage created the demand for
organized public music, as the increasing availability of instruments created the demand
for chamber music, which is music for a small ensemble of instrumentalists.he middle
Baroque period in Italy is defined by the emergence of the vocal styles of cantata, oratorio,
and opera during the 1630s, and a new concept of melody and harmony that elevated the
status of the music to one of equality with the words, which formerly had been regarded as
pre-eminent. The florid, coloratura monody of the early Baroque gave way to a simpler,
more polished melodic style. These melodies were built from short, cadentially delimited
ideas often based on stylized dance patterns drawn from the sarabande or the courante.
The harmonies, too, might be simpler[clarification needed] than in the early Baroque monody, and
the accompanying bass lines were more integrated with the melody, producing a
contrapuntal equivalence of the parts that later led to the device of an initial bass
anticipation of the aria melody. This harmonic simplification also led to a new formal device
of the differentiation of recitative (a more spoken part of opera) and aria (a part of opera
that used sung melodies). The most important innovators of this style were the
Romans Luigi Rossi and Giacomo Carissimi, who were primarily composers of cantatas
and oratorios, respectively, and the Venetian Francesco Cavalli, who was principally an
opera composer. Later important practitioners of this style include Antonio Cesti, Giovanni
Legrenzi, and Alessandro Stradella.

The middle Baroque had absolutely no bearing on the theoretical work of Johann
Fux, who systematized the strict counterpoint characteristic of earlier ages in his Gradus
ad Parnassum (1725). One pre-eminent example of a court style composer is Jean-
Baptiste Lully. He purchased patents from the monarchy to be the sole composer of
operas for the French king and to prevent others from having operas staged. He
completed 15 lyric tragedies and left unfinished Achille et Polyxène. Lully was an early
example of a conductor; he would beat the time with a large staff to keep his ensembles
together.
Musically, he did not establish the string-dominated norm for orchestras, which was
inherited from the Italian opera, and the characteristically French five-part
disposition(violins, violas in hautes-contre, tailles and quintes sizes and bass violins) had
been used in the ballet from the time of Louis XIII. He did, however, introduce this
ensemble to the lyric theatre, with the upper parts often doubled by recorders, flutes, and

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oboes, and the bass by bassoons. Trumpets and kettledrums were frequently added for
heroic scenes.

Arcangelo Corelli
Arcangelo Corelli is remembered as influential for his achievements on the other side
of musical technique as a violinist who organized violin technique and pedagogy and in
purely instrumental music, particularly his advocacy and development of the concerto
grosso.Where as Lully was ensconced at court, Corelli was one of the first composers to
publish widely and have his music performed all over Europe. As with Lully's stylization
and organization of the opera, the concerto grosso is built on strong contrasts sections
alternate between those played by the full orchestra, and those played by a smaller group.
Dynamics were "terraced", that is with a sharp transition from loud to soft and back again.
Fast sections and slow sections were juxtaposed against each other. Numbered among
his students is Antonio Vivaldi, who later composed hundreds of works based on the
principles in Corelli's trio sonatas and concerti.

In contrast to these composers, Dieterich Buxtehude was not a creature of court but
instead was church musician, holding the posts of organist and Werkmeister at the
Marienkirche at Lübeck. His duties as Werkmeister involved acting as the secretary,
treasurer, and business manager of the church, while his position as organist included
playing for all the main services, sometimes in collaboration with other instrumentalists or
vocalists, who were also paid by the church. Entirely outside of his official church duties,
he organised and directed a concert series known as the Abendmusiken, which included
performances of sacred dramatic works regarded by his contemporaries as the equivalent
of operas.

Late baroque music (1680–1730)

The work of George Frideric Handel, Johann Sebastian Bach and their contemporaries,
including Domenico Scarlatti, Antonio Vivaldi, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Georg Philipp
Telemann, and others advanced the Baroque era to its climax.  Through the work
of  Johann Fux, the Renaissance style of polyphony was made the basis for the study of
composition for future musical eras. The composers of the late baroque had established
their feats of composition long before the works of Johann Fux.

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 A continuous worker, Handel borrowed from other composers and often "recycled" his
own material. He was also known for reworking pieces such as the famous Messiah, which
premiered in 1742, for available singers and musicians.

What are the characteristics of Baroque music?

The new interest in music’s dramatic and rhetorical possibilities gave rise to a wealth of
new sound ideals in the Baroque period. Contrast as a dramatic element Contrast is an
important ingredient in the drama of a Baroque composition. The differences between loud
and soft, solo and ensemble (as in the concerto), different instruments and timbres all play
an important role in many Baroque compositions. Composers also began to be more
precise about instrumentation, often specifying the instruments on which a piece should be
played instead of allowing the performer to choose. Brilliant instruments like the trumpet
and violin also grew in popularity.

Monody and the advent of the basso continuo In previous musical eras, a piece of
music tended to consist of a single melody, perhaps with an improvised accompaniment,
or several melodies played simultaneously. Not until the Baroque period did the concept of
“melody” and “harmony” truly begin to be articulated. As part of the effort to imitate ancient
music, composers started focusing less on the complicated polyphony that dominated the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and more on a single voice with a simplified
accompaniment, or monody. If music was a form of rhetoric, as the writings of the Greeks
and Romans indicate, a powerful orator is necessary—and who better for the job than a
vocal soloist? The new merger between the expression of feeling and the solo singer
come through loud and clear in Monteverdi’s preface to the Combattimento di Tancredi e
Clorinda from his Eighth Book of Madrigals (1638), in which he writes: “It has seemed to
me that the chief passions or affections of our mind are three in number, namely anger,
equanimity and humility.

The best philosophers agree, and the very nature of our voice, with its high, low and
middle ranges, would indicate as much.” The earliest operas are an excellent illustration of
this new aesthetic. Along with the emphasis on a single melody and bass line came the
practice of basso continuo, a method of musical notation in which the melody and bass
line are written out and the harmonic filler indicated in a type of shorthand. As the Italian
musician Agostino Agazzari explained in 1607:

Since the true style of expressing the words has at last been found, namely, by
reproducing their sense in the best manner possible, which succeeds best with a single

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voice (or no more than a few), as in the modern airs by various able men, and as is the
constant practice at Rome in concerted music, I say that it is not necessary to make a
score… A Bass, with its signs for the harmonies, is enough.
But if some one were to tell me that, for playing the old works, full of fugue and
counterpoints, a Bass is not enough, my answer is that vocal works of this kind are no
longer in use. Because basso continuo, or thorough bass, remained standard practice until
the end of the Baroque period, the era is sometimes known as the “age of the thorough
bass.”
Different instrumental sounds

After being ignored for decades, Baroque music has become increasingly popular over the
last fifty years. As part of this new interest, scholars and musicians have spent countless
hours trying to figure out how the music might have sounded to 17th and 18th century
audiences. While we will never be able to recreate a performance precisely, their work has
unearthed several major differences between Baroque and modern ensembles:

pitch: In 1939, modern orchestras agreed to tune to a’=440hz (the note A pitched at 440
cycles per second), which replaced a previously lower pitch (a’=435hz) adopted in 1859.
Before 1859, however, there was no pitch standard. The note to which Baroque
ensembles tuned, therefore, varied widely at different times and in different places. As a
result, the music notated on a score might have sounded as much as a half tone lower
than how it would traditionally be performed today. In an effort to allow for this discrepancy,
many baroque ensembles adjust their tuning to the repertoire being performed: a’= 415hz
for late baroque music, a’=392hz for French music, a’=440hz for early Italian music and
a’=430hz for classical repertoire.

Timbre: While most of the instruments in a baroque ensemble are familiar, there are
several prominent members no longer featured in modern ensembles.
The harpsichord was the primary keyboard instrument (and an important member of the
continuo group), and instruments important in the 16th and 17th centuries like
the luteand viol, still continued to be used. Variations in instruments still popular today also
gave the baroque ensemble a different sound. String instruments like the violin, viola and
cello used gut strings rather than the strings wrapped in metal with which they are strung
today, for example, giving them a mellower, sweeter tone. Performance technique: A
baroque score contains little (if any) information about elements like articulation,
ornamentation or dynamics, and so modern ensembles need to make their own informed
choices before each performance. Mechanical differences between baroque and modern
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instruments also suggest that the older instruments would have sounded differently, so
ensembles like Music of the Baroque often adjust their technique to allow for this. Because
baroque and modern bows are structurally different, for example, string players using
modern bows often use a gentler attack on the string and crescendos and diminuendos on
longer notes. 17th and 18th century performance treatises also imply that finger vibrato (a
technique in which a string player rocks his or her fingertip on the string to enrich the tone)
was used sparingly for expressive moments, while bow vibrato (an undulating movement
of the bow) was generally preferred.

What musical forms came to define the baroque era?

While forms from earlier eras continued to be used, such as the motet or particular
dances, the interest in music as a form of rhetoric sparked the development of new
genres, particularly in the area of vocal music. Many of the forms associated with the
baroque era come directly out of this new dramatic impulse, particularly opera, the oratorio
and the cantata. In the realm of instrumental music, the notion of contrast and the desire to
create large-scale forms gave rise to the concerto, sonata and suite.

Vocal music

Opera: A drama that is primarily sung, accompanied by instruments, and presented on

stage. Operas typically alternate between recitative, speech-like song that advances the
plot, and arias, songs in which characters express feelings at particular points in the
action. Choruses and dances are also frequently included. The advent of the genre at the
turn of the seventeenth century is often associated with the activities of a group of poets,
musicians and scholars in Florence known today as the Florentine Camerata. The first
surviving opera was Jacopo Peri’s Dafne, based on a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini and
performed in Florence in 1598; the earliest opera still performed today is Claudio
Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607). The subjects of the first operas are all taken from Greek myth,
reflecting the genre’s close alliances with attempts to recreate the music and drama of
ancient cultures, and were performed solely in aristocratic circles for invited guests.

When the first public opera houses opened in Venice in 1637, the genre was
altered to suit the preferences of the audience. Solo singers took on a sort of celebrity
status, and greater emphasis was placed on the aria as a result. Recitative grew less
important, and choruses and dances virtually disappeared from Italian opera. The financial
realities of staging frequent opera productions also had an effect. The spectacular stage
effects associated with opera at court were greatly downplayed, and librettos were
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constructed to take advantage of stock scenic devices. By the early 18th century
(particularly in Naples), two subgenres of opera became evident: opera seria, in which the
focus was on serious subject matter and the da capo aria, and opera buffa, which had a
lighter, even comic tone and sometimes used duets, trios and larger ensembles. The
Italian tradition of opera gradually dominated most European countries. In late 17th
century France, however, the Italian-born Jean-Baptiste Lully and librettist Philippe
Quinault created a uniquely French version of opera known as tragédie-lyrique.

Oratorio: an extended musical drama with a text based on religious subject matter,
intended for performance without scenery, costume or action. Oratorio originally meant
prayer hall, a building located adjacent to a church that was designed as a place for
religious experiences distinct from the liturgy. Although there are late sixteenth century
precedents for the oratorio in the motet and madrigal repertoire, the oratorio as a distinct
musical genre emerged amidst the excellent acoustics of these spaces in the early 1600s.
By the middle of the 17th century, oratorios were performed in palaces and public theaters
and were growing increasingly similar to operas, although the subject matter, division into
two parts (rather than three acts) and absence of staged action still set it apart. Some of
the composers associated with the genre in Italy include Giocomo Carissimi, Alessandro
Scarlatti and Antonio Vivaldi. The oratorio grew in popularity in other parts of Europe as
well. In Protestant Germany, dramatic music composed for use in the Lutheran church
gradually became fused with elements of the oratorio, especially in the inclusion of non-
Biblical texts. The oratorio passion, as it came to be called, culminated in the great works
of J. S. Bach. Other well known examples outside of Italy include the English oratorios
of George Frideric Handel, who popularized the genre in London as a result of the English
distaste for Italian opera. Works such as Messiah, Israel in Egypt and Judas
Maccabeus remain audience favorites to this day.

Cantata: an extended piece consisting of a succession of recitatives and set pieces such
as arias, duets and choruses. Originating in early 17th century Italy, the cantata began as
a secular work composed for solo voice and basso continuo, most likely intended for
performance at private social gatherings. Many of these works were published, suggesting
that they were performed by professional musicians and amateurs alike. By the middle of
the century cantatas were published less frequently, suggesting that performances were
increasingly being done by professionals. By the end of the 17th century, cantatas began
incorporating the da capo aria and often had orchestral accompaniments. Major
composers in the Italian cantata genre include Luigi Rossi, Antonio Cesti, Alessandro
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Stradella, and in the first half of the 18th century Alessandro Scarlatti, Handel, Benedetto
Marcello and Johann Adolf Hasse. Outside of Italy, the expanding genre of the
Lutheran motet began incorporating many elements of the Italian cantata, especially
techniques of dramatic expression like recitative and aria. Bach’s many cantatas show the
wide ranging influence of their Italian counterparts.

Instrumental music

Sonata: Used to describe several types of pieces in the baroque era, the term sonata
most commonly designated a work in several movements for one or more instruments
(most frequently violins) and bassocontinuo; a sonata for two violins or other treble
instruments plus bass was usually called a trio sonata. By the 1650s, sonatas were often
classified either as sonatas da chiesa (“church sonatas”), usually comprised of four
movements alternating between slow and fast tempos and performed in church,
or sonatas da camera (“chamber sonata”), which consisted of a series of dances akin to
the suite. Examples of both types can be found in the late 17th century works of Corelli. In
the 18th century, Telemann, Bach andHandel wrote numerous sonatas modeled on
Corelli’s sonatas da chiesa. The rise to prominence of solo sonatas for keyboard
instruments begins late in the baroque period, including those for organ (Bach) and
harpsichord (Handel, Domenico Scarlatti). Other famous examples of solo sonatas include
Bach’s works for unaccompanied violin and cello.

Concerto: Derived from the Italian concertare (to join together, unite), the concerto took
several forms during the baroque era. Until the early 18th century, a concerto was simply a
composition that united a diverse ensemble consisting of voices, instruments or both.
Sacred works for voices and instruments were often called concertos, while similar secular
works were generally termed arie (airs), cantatas or musiche. While large scale sacred
concertos can be found in the works of Claudio Monteverdi, more intimate compositions
for one to four voices, continuo and additional solo instruments were far more common. In
Germany, wonderful examples of the sacred concerto can be found in the works of Johann
Hermann Schein, Michael Praetorius, Samuel Scheidt and Heinrich Schütz (especially
his Kleine geistliche Concerte, or “Small Sacred Concertos,” of 1636–39).

Later in the seventeenth century, the concerto began to assume its modern definition: a
multimovement work for instrumental soloist (or group of soloists) and orchestra. Taking its
cue from the canzonas and sonatas of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which
used contrasting groups of instruments to great effect, the concerto grosso alternates a
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small group of soloists with a larger ensemble. The works of Corelli, particularly his Op. 6
collection, provide perhaps the best known examples of the late 17th century concerto
grosso. While Corelli’s works were emulated in the 18th century, most notably in Handel’s
Op. 6 collection, many 18th century examples of the concerto grosso show the increasing
influence of the solo concerto (for example, the Brandenburg Concertos of J. S. Bach).

The most dominant type of concerto in the 18th century was the solo concerto, which
featured a single instrument in contrast with an ensemble. The most prolific composer of
the solo concerto was Antonio Vivaldi, who wrote approximately 350 and established the
concerto’s standard three-movement form (two fast outer movements, one middle
movement in a slower tempo). While most solo concertos were written for violin, trumpet
concertos were also popular, and concertos were also composed for cello, oboe, flute and
bassoon. In the 1730s, Handel wrote 16 organ concertos, and Bach also composed
several concertos for harpsichord around the same time (most of these are arrangements
of preexistent works).

Suite: Based on the traditional pairing of dances in the Renaissance, the suite was the
first multi-movement work for instruments. The suite was essentially a series of dances in
the same key, most or all of them in two-part form. Around the middle of the 17th century in
Germany the sequence of allemande, courante, sarabande and giguebecame relatively
standard, although other dance movements, such as additional allemandes or
courantes,bourreés, gavottes and minuets, were often inserted. Most suites also began
with an introductory movement such as a prelude, ouverture or fantasia. To many baroque
composers, the different dances embodied specific characters. In his Der volkommene
Capellmeister (The Complete Music Director), 1739, German theorist Johann Mattheson
gave a list of each dance’s character: the minuet was “moderate gaiety,” the gavotte
“jubilant joy,” the bourreé “contentedness,” the courante “hope,” the sarabande “ambition”
and the gigue could signify a number of emotions ranging from anger to flightiness.
Baroque suites were scored for solo instruments as well as orchestra; those written for one
or two melody instruments and continuo are sometimes titled sonata da camera. French
suites for keyboard are sometimes called ordres (as in the works of François Couperin,
who inserted many non-dance movements including evocative character sketches of court
personnel.

What was it like to attend a concert in the baroque era?

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 In modern times, going to a concert is an event. We hear an ad on the radio or see a
listing in the newspaper; we purchase tickets; we go to a concert hall and sit quietly until it
is time to applaud. In the baroque era, this kind of public concert was rare. Many of the
most famous baroque compositions were performed in churches for a service, or as part of
a private concert or celebration in the home of a wealthy patron. During the course of the
baroque, however, public performances became more common, particularly in the genres
of opera and oratorio, and our modern concert tradition began to coalesce in many
European cities. As Roger North described a performance in one of the earliest concert
series, organized in London in the 1670s:

The first attempt was low: a project of old [John] Banister, who was a good violin, and
a theatrical composer. He opened an obscure room in a public house in White friars; filled
it with tables and seats, and made a side box with curtains for the music. Sometimes
consort, sometimes solos, of the violin, flageolet, bass viol, lute and song all’Italiana, and
such varieties diverted the company, who paid at coming in. One shilling a piece, call for
what you please, pay the reckoning, and Welcome gentlemen.

The advent of the public concert made the growing middle class an important source of
income for musicians. By the end of the baroque, this social subset had become a musical
patron almost as powerful as the church or court.

What came after the baroque period?

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the baroque idea of music as a form of
rhetoric was under attack. Music had a marvelously potent power to express even the
most difficult concepts—but only in its most “natural” form, which the baroque era had
ostensibly muddled. As Johann Adolph Scheibe said of J. S. Bach in 1737,

This great man would be the admiration of whole nations if he made more amenity, if
he did not take away the natural element in his pieces by giving them a turgid and
confused style, and if he did not darken their beauty by an excess of art. Since he judges
according to his own fingers, his pieces are extremely difficult to play; for he demands that
singers and instrumentalists should be able to do with their throats and instruments
whatever he can play on the clavier, but this is impossible… Turgidity has led [him] from
the natural to the artificial, and from the lofty to the somber; and…one admires the onerous
labor and uncommon effort—which, however, are vainly employed, since they conflict with
Nature.

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 Scheibe’s insistence on clarity and ease of performance hints at a major change in
musical aesthetics: throughout his diatribe, the final arbiter of taste is not Plato or Aristotle,
but ultimately the listeners and performers themselves. This new emphasis on direct
melodic expression and clear musical architecture points the way to the classical period,
the age of Mozart and Haydn.

The baroque era in the modern age

Although the baroque period ended over 250 years ago, vestiges of the era can be
heard everywhere. Some of the most influential and beloved compositions are regularly
performed in concert halls, and a wealth of recordings make the baroque available on
demand. Many of the musical genres still in use today, like the oratorio, concerto and
opera, originated in the period. Twentieth century composers such as Ralph Vaughn
Williams, Igor Stravinsky and Benjamin Britten paid homage to the baroque in their works.
Its influence can even be heard outside the realm of art music: the free movement
between solo and group in jazz is sometimes compared to baroque music, and snippets of
Bach and Vivaldi frequently appear in the solos of heavy metal guitarists. And the spirit of
the baroque an unwavering belief in the power of music to touch people’s lives changed
music history forever.

Etymology on baroque music.

The term "Baroque" is generally used by music historians to describe a broad range
of styles from a wide geographic region, mostly in Europe, composed over a period of
approximately 150 years. Although it was long thought that the word as a critical term was
first applied to architecture, in fact it appears earlier in reference to music, in an
anonymous, satirical review of the première in October 1733 of Rameau's Hippolyte et
Aricie, printed in the Mercure de France in May 1734. The critic implied that the novelty in
this opera was "du barocque", complaining that the music lacked coherent melody, was
filled with unremitting dissonances, constantly changed key and meter, and speedily ran
through every compositional device.

The systematic application by historians of the term "baroque" to music of this period is
a relatively recent development. In 1919, Curt Sachs became the first to apply the five
characteristics of Heinrich Wölfflin's theory of the Baroque systematically to music.Critics
were quick to question the attempt to transpose Wölfflin's categories to music, however,
and in the second quarter of the 20th century independent attempts were made
13
by Manfred Bukofzer (in Germany and, after his immigration, in America) and by Suzanne
Clercx-Lejeune (in Belgium) to use autonomous, technical analysis rather than
comparative abstractions, in order to avoid the adaptation of theories based on the plastic
arts and literature to music. All of these efforts resulted in appreciable disagreement about
time boundaries of the period, especially concerning when it began. In English the term
acquired currency only in the 1940s, in the writings of Bukofzer and Paul Henry Lang.

As late as 1960, there was still considerable dispute in academic circles, particularly in
France and Britain, whether it was meaningful to lump together music as diverse as that
of Jacopo Peri, Domenico Scarlatti, and Johann Sebastian Bach under a single rubric.
Nevertheless, the term has become widely used and accepted for this broad range of
music. It may be helpful to distinguish the Baroque from both the preceding (Renaissance)
and following (Classical) periods of musical history.

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Tomaso Albinoni

Who is Tomaso Albinoni?

Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni (8 June 1671 – 17 January 1751) was an

Italian Baroque composer. While famous in his day as an opera composer, he is known
today for his instrumental music, especially his concertos. He is also remembered today
for a work called "Adagio in G minor", supposedly written by him, but probably written
by Remo Giazotto, a modern musicologist and composer, who was a cataloger of the
works of Albinoni.
Born in Venice, Republic of Venice, to Antonio Albinoni, a wealthy paper merchant in
Venice, he studied violin and singing. Relatively little is known about his life especially
considering his contemporary stature as a composer, and the comparatively well-
documented period in which he lived. In 1694 he dedicated his Opus 1 to the fellow-
Venetian, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (grand-nephew of Pope Alexander VIII). His first
opera, Zenobia, regina de Palmireni, was produced in Venice in 1694. Albinoni was
possibly employed in 1700 as a violinist to Charles IV, Duke of Mantua, to whom he
dedicated his Opus 2 collection of instrumental pieces. In 1701 he wrote his hugely
popular suites Opus 3, and dedicated that collection to Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke
of Tuscany.

In 1705, he was married; Antonino Biffi, the maestro di cappella of San Marco was
a witness, and evidently was a friend of Albinoni. Albinoni seems to have no other
connection with that primary musical establishment in Venice, however, and achieved his
e a r l y f a m e a s a n o p e r a c o m p o s e r a t m a n y c i t i e s i n I t a l y, i n c l u d i n g
Venice, Genoa, Bologna, Mantua, Udine, Piacenza, and Naples. During this time he was
also composing instrumental music in abundance: prior to 1705, he mostly wrote trio
sonatas and violin concertos, but between then and 1719 he wrote
solo sonatas and concertos for oboe.

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 Unlike most composers of his time, he appears never to have sought a post at
either a church or noble court, but then he was a man of independent means and had the
option to compose music independently. In 1722, Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of
Bavaria, to whom Albinoni had dedicated a set of twelve concertos, invited him to direct
two of his operas in Munich.

Around 1740, a collection of Albinoni's violin sonatas was published in France as

a posthumous work, and scholars long presumed that meant that Albinoni had died by that
time. However, it appears he lived on in Venice in obscurity; a record from the parish of
San Barnaba indicates Tomaso Albinoni died in Venice in 1751, of diabetes mellitus.

Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni was a Venetian Baroque composer. While famous in his day as
an opera composer, he is mainly remembered today for his instrumental music, some of
which is regularly recorded. The "Adagio in G minor" attributed to him (actually a later
reconstruction) is one of the most frequently recorded pieces of Baroque music.

Born to Antonio Albinoni, a wealthy paper merchant in Venice, Tomaso Albinoni

studied violin and singing. At an early age he became proficient as a singer and, more
notably, as a violinist, though not being a member of the performers' guild he was unable
to play publicly so he turned his hand to composition. Relatively little is known about his
life, especially considering his contemporary stature as a composer, and the comparatively
well-documented period in which he lived. His first opera, Zenobia, regina de Palmireni,
was produced in Venice in 1694, coinciding with his first collection of instrumental music,
the 12 Sonate a tre, Op.1, dedicated to the fellow-Venetian Pietro, Cardinal Ottoboni
(grand-nephew of Pope Alexander VIII); Ottoboni was an important patron in Rome of
other composers, such as Arcangelo Corelli. Thereafter Albinoni divided his attention
almost equally between vocal composition (operas, serenatas and cantatas) and
instrumental composition (sonatas and concertos). Albinoni was possibly employed in
1700 as a violinist to Charles IV, Duke of Mantua, to whom he dedicated his Op. 2
collection of instrumental pieces. In 1701 he wrote his hugely popular suites Op. 3, and
dedicated that collection to Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Until his father's death in 1709, Tomaso Albinoni was able to cultivate music more for
pleasure than for profit, referring to himself as Dilettante Veneto - a term which in
18th century Italy was totally devoid of unfavourable connotations. Under the terms of his
father's will he was relieved of the duty (which he would normally have assumed as eldest

16
son) to take charge of the family business, this task being given to his younger brothers.
Henceforth he was to be a full-time musician, a prolific composer who according to one
report, also ran a successful academy of singing.

A lifelong resident of Venice, Tomaso Albinoni married in 1705 an opera singer,

Margherita Raimondi (d 1721); Antonino Biffi, the maestro di cappella of San Marco was a
witness, and evidently was a friend of Albinoni's. Albinoni seems to have no other
connection with that primary musical establishment in Venice, however, and achieved his
early fame as an opera composer at many cities in Italy, including Venice, Genoa,
Bologna, Mantua, Udine, Piacenza, and Naples. He composed as many as 81 operas, of
which 28 were produced in Venice between 1723 and 1740. Several of his operas were
performed in northern Europe from the 1720's onwards.

Unlike most composers of his time, Tomaso Albinoni appears never to have sought a
post at either a church or court of nobility, but then he was a man of independent means
and had the option to compose music independently. In 1722 he travelled to Munich at the
invitation of the Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria (to whom Albinoni had dedicated
a set of twelve concertos) to supervise performances of I veri amici and Il trionfo
d'amore as part of the wedding celebrations for the Prince-Elector and the daughter of the
late Emperor Joseph I. During this time Albinoni was also composing instrumental music in
abundance: prior to 1705, he mostly wrote trio sonatas and violin concertos, but between
then and 1719 he wrote solo sonatas and concertos for oboe.

Most of his operatic works have been lost, having not been published during his
lifetime. Nine collections of instrumental works were however published, meeting with
considerable success and consequent reprints; thus it is as a composer of instrumental
music (99 sonatas, 59 concertos and 9 sinfonias) that he is known today. In his lifetime
these works were favourably compared with those of Arcangelo Corelli and Antonio
Vivaldi, and his nine collections published in Italy, Amsterdam and London were either
dedicated to or sponsored by an impressive list of southern European nobility.

Albinoni was particularly fond of the oboe, a relatively new introduction in Italy, and
is credited with being the first Italian to compose oboe concertos (Op. 7, 1715). Prior to
Op.7, Albinoni had not published any compositions with parts for wind instruments. The
concerto, in particular, had been regarded as the province of stringed instruments. It is
17
likely that the first concertos featuring a solo oboe appeared from German composers
such as Georg Philipp Telemann or Georg Frideric Handel. Nevertheless, the four
concertos with one oboe (Nos. 3, 6, 9 and 12) and the four with two oboes (Nos. 2, 5, 8
and 11) in Albinoni's Op.7 were the first of their kind to be published, and proved so
successful that the composer repeated the formula in Op.9 (1722).

Though Tomaso Albinoni resided in Venice all his life, he travelled frequently
throughout southern Europe; the European nobility would also have made his
acquaintance in Venice, now a popular destination city. With its commercial fortunes in the
Adriatic and Mediterranean in decline, the enterprising City-State turned to tourism as its
new source of wealth, taking advantage of its fabled water setting and ornate buildings,
and putting on elongated and elaborate carnivals which regularly attracted the European
courts and nobility.

Apart from some further instrumental works circulating in manuscript in 1735, little is
known of Albinoni's life and musical activity after the mid-1720's. However, so much of his
output has been lost, one can surely not put our lack of knowledge down to musical or
composition inactivity. Around 1740, a collection of Albinoni's violin sonatas was published
in France as a posthumous work, and scholars long presumed that meant that Albinoni
had died by that time. However it appears he lived on in Venice in obscurity; a record from
the parish of San Barnaba indicates Tomaso Albinoni died in Venice in 1751, of diabetes.

Much of his work was lost during the latter years of World War II with the bombing
of Dresden and the Dresden State library. In 1945, Remo Giazotto, a Milanese
musicologist travelled to Dresden to complete his biography of Albinoni and his listing of
Albinoni's music. Among the ruins, he discovered a fragment of manuscript. Only the bass
line and six bars of melody had survived, possibly from the slow movement of a Trio
Sonata or Sonata da Chiesa. It was from this fragment that Giazotto reconstructed the
now-famous Adagio, a piece which is instantly associated with Albinoni today, yet which
ironically Albinoni would doubtless hardly recognise.

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ADAGIO IN G MINOR

The Adagio in G minor for violin, strings, and organ continuo is a neo-
Baroque composition popularly attributed to the 18th-century Venetian master Tomaso
Albinoni, but actually composed by 20th-century musicologist and Albinoni
biographer Remo Giazotto, purportedly based on the discovery of a manuscript fragment
by Albinoni. There is a continuing scholarly debate about whether the alleged fragment
was real, or a musical hoax perpetrated by Giazotto, but there is no doubt about Giazotto's
authorship of the remainder of the work.The composition is often referred to as "Albinoni's
Adagio" or "Adagio in G minor by Albinoni, arranged by Giazotto", but the attribution is
incorrect. The ascription to Albinoni rests upon Giazotto's purported discovery of a
manuscript fragment (consisting of a few opening measures of the melody line and basso
continuo portion) from a slow second movement of an otherwise unknown Albinoni trio
sonata.
According to Giazotto, he obtained the document shortly after the end of World War II
from the Saxon State Library in Dresden which had preserved most of its collection,
though its buildings were destroyed in the bombing raids of February and March 1945 by
the British and American Air Forces. Giazotto concluded that the manuscript fragment was
a portion of a church sonata (sonata da chiesa, one of two standard forms of the trio
sonata) in G minor composed by Albinoni, possibly as part of his Op. 4 set, around 1708.

In his account, Giazotto then constructed the balance of the complete single-movement
work based on this fragmentary theme. He copyrighted it and published it in 1958 under a
title which, translated into English, reads "Adagio in G Minor for Strings and Organ, on Two
Thematic Ideas and on a Figured Bass by Tomaso Albinoni".Giazotto never produced the
manuscript fragment, and no official record has been found of its presence in the collection
of the Saxon State Library.

The piece is most commonly orchestrated for string ensemble and organ, or string
ensemble alone, but with its growing fame has been transcribed for other instruments.
Italian conductor Ino Savini (1904–1995) transcribed the Adagio for a large orchestra and
conducted the piece himself in Ostrava in 1967 with the Janáček Philharmonic. The
composition has also permeated popular culture, having been used as background music
for many films, in television programmes, and in advertisements (see below).

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Film[edit]
The Adagio was used:

• as an underlying score in various arrangements by Jean Ledrut for Orson Welles'

1962 film adaption of Kafka's The Trial
• in the 1962 film Sundays and Cybele (original title Les dimanches de Ville d'Avray)
• in the 1963 Italian documentary film La rabbia, in the Part 1 directed by Pier Paolo
Pasolini
• in the 1974 Werner Herzog film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
• in the original 1975 version of the film Rollerball
• in the 1979 film Une femme spéciale
• in the 1980 film Fame
• in the 1981 made-for-TV movie Murder in Texas (Katharine Ross and Sam Elliott)
• in the 1981 Peter Weir film Gallipoli
• in the 1981 film Dragonslayer
• in the 1982 animated Captain Harlock film Arcadia of My Youth
• in the 1983 Rowan Atkinson short "Dead On Time"
• in the 1983 film Flashdance
• in the 1983 animated TV series Mirai Keisatsu Urashiman (ep. 13)
• in the 1984 film Sakharov starring Jason Robards as Andrei Sakharov
• in the 1988 Senegalese war drama Camp de Thiaroye by Ousmane Sembene
• in the 1989 Robert Englund version of The Phantom of the Opera, as the Phantom's
masterpiece "Don Juan Triumphant" (with lyrics added)
• in the 1990 film Raspad by Mikhail Belikov
• in the 1991 film The Doors at the Père Lachaise Cemetery scene.
• in the 1993 Manoel de Oliveira film Abraham Valley
• in the 1995 film Full Body Massage.
• in the scenes meant to portray cellist Vedran Smailović in the 1997 film Welcome to
Sarajevo
• in the 1998 Swedish film Show Me Love (original title Fucking Åmål)
• in Azerbaijani director Rasim Ojagov's 1998 film A Hotel Room
• as the main theme of Norman McLaren's film Ballet Adagio, a slow-motion study on
ballet
• in Turkish director Zeki Demirkubuz's 2009 film Kıskanmak (Envy)
• in the 2000 Russian animated film Adagio by Garry Bardin
• in the 2000 Japanese film Ring 0: Birthday (scene Unexpected Selection)
• in the 2014 film The Inbetweeners 2
• in the 2016 film Manchester by the Sea

• Swedish Jazz singer Monica Zetterlund on her album "Monica Monica".

• Liesbeth List, in "De Kinderen van de Zee" (1966).
• A vocal version, with lyrics by Gordon Grey, was recorded by The Castells (not the
US group of the same name) on a Masquerade 7" single in 1967.
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• The Doors, in "A Feast of Friends" on the album An American Prayer (1978) & as a
40th anniversary bonus track on the album Waiting for the Sun (1968)
• Richard Clayderman, in "Sentimental Medley" on the album "La musique de
l'amour" (1980, re-released 2009)
• The Hungarian singer Pál Szécsi released a single in 1973: the B-side is Ne
félj! with music by Albinoni (Adagio) and lyrics by Szécsi.[7] In the next year another
famous Hungarian singer, Kati Kovács presented this song too, with lyrics by
Szécsi.
• Renaissance, as "Cold is Being", with lyrics by Betty Thatcher, on the album Turn of
the Cards (1974). The piece is credited to guitarist and primary composer Michael
Dunford (despite not writing any of the music) and Thatcher, with no mention of
Giazotto; however, the back notes thank Albinoni for the song. Also recorded by
frontwoman Annie Haslam as "Save Us All" on her second solo album Still
Life (1985)
• Procol Harum recorded Adagio Di Albinoni in 1976 and released it as a single in
France, backed with The Blue Danube. (Chrysalis Records CHA 141) Later in 2005,
both songs were included on "Procol's Ninth" CD as bonus tracks. (Friday Music
8-2942110222-9)
• Brian Auger and the Trinity, in "Adagio per archi e organo" on the
album Befour (1970)
• Louise Tucker recorded a version with lyrics called "Graveyard Angel" that
appeared on her 1983 album, Midnight Blue.
• Yngwie Malmsteen, in Icarus Dream Suite Op. 4 (1984)
• Sigue Sigue Sputnik, in "Albinoni Vs. Star Wars, Pts. 1 & 2" on their second
album Dress for Excess (1988).
• Sarah Brightman has a vocal version, "Anytime, Anywhere" on the
album Eden (1998) This was then covered by Liriel Domiciano in 2001 and Will
Martin in 2007.
• In 1999, Lara Fabian recorded a crossover in both English and Italian, named
"Adagio" (later covered by Il Divo and Majida El Roumi).
• In 2003, UK Trance trio Above & Beyond, under their Rollerball alias, produced a
trance rendition of Adagio In G with additional opera voices and released it as
"Albinoni" on their Anjunabeats record label.
• In 2004, Tiësto produced his own rendition of this composition and released it as
"Athena" on the album Parade of the Athletes.
• Shlomo Artzi recorded a version with Hebrew lyrics called: ‫=[ את הלכת‬You had
gone] in his album "‫=[ "את ואני‬You and me] (1975)
• Dominic Miller, in his album Shapes (2004)
• Sentenced used it as opener for their last concert at show at Club
Teatria, Oulu, Finland, on 1 October 2005.
• Sissel Kyrkjebø, in her album "Into Paradise" (2006)
• Anathema used it as opener for their A Moment in Time DVD in 2006.
• Il Divo recorded their version of "Adagio" in Italian featured in their 2008 album The
Promise
21
 • Muse used it as an intro to their song "Resistance" in some dates of their The
Resistance Tour.

DESCRIPTION FROM MICHAEL JAMESON

Many composers have attained fame through a single work which has gone on to
become an international favorite, and Tomaso Albinoni would have belonged to that
category if it were not for the fact that the famous Albinoni Adagio was not written by him.
This soulful and elegiac work was in fact created by the Italian musicologist Remo
Giazotto, who came across a tiny manuscript fragment (consisting of just a few measures
of the melody line and basso continuo part) among relics in a library collection in Dresden,
shortly after the end of World War II. After considering the evidence, Giazotto concluded
that he had unearthed a portion of a church sonata (sonata da chiesa) which he presumed
had been composed by Albinoni, possibly as part of his Op. 4 set, around 1708.

On the basis of these findings, Giazotto proceeded to construct a complete single-

movement work around the fragmentary theme he had ascribed to the Venetian master.
The scoring, for organ and strings, and indeed the key of G minor, lend themselves to a
mood of great solemnity, and the melody is a magnificent one no matter who composed it,
with outbursts of quasi-improvised melancholy that suggests the tragic passion of an
opera. All in all, this hybridized (some would say fraudulent) work is one of the most
popular examples of music attributed to the Italian Baroque, and if (as is widely
thought) Giazotto was canny enough to secure copyright to the piece, the Albinoni-
Giazotto Adagio must have brought him wealth. New recordings of the work continue to
appear every year.

ANALYSIS
The Adagio is a wildly, but very elegantly, embellished progression of harmonies. All the
embellishments and embellishments mean not only little turns, appoggiaturas, and the like,
but also whole melodic gestures, scales, and small arpeggios are written out quite
carefully by Bach the result is a work that might sound improvised but is most definitely
not. The G minor Fuga is the most compact of the three fugues in the volume (and note
that these are not in fact fugues in the proper sense of the word, but rather a kind of fugue/
22
Baroque-concerto hybrid form). It was transcribed for lute by Bach at some later time
(BWV 1000). The Siciliana is a gentle thing in B flat major; the main melody is played in
the lowest register of the instrument while a warm commentary unfolds in the upper
register. The Presto finale is a moto perpetuo in sixteenth notes whose 3/8 meter has at
times a hint of cross-rhythm to it.

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