Baroque Music

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Types and Forms of Baroque Composition

A significant number of new vocal and instrumental genres were developed during the baroque period. Opera, cantatas, and oratorios were important new types of vocal music that evolved in the 17th century. Sonatas, concertos, suites, and fugues were major new instrumental works. A number of these compositions included several movements that contrasted with each other in mood, tempo, and thematic material. Such compositions came to be somewhat longer and broader in scope than earlier works. Numerous forms were used in the baroque era, the most basic being binary (in two parts or sections), ternary (in three sections), and variations (featuring varied versions of a musical theme).

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Baroque Vocal Music

Monody was a new style of melody that developed in Italy during the 17th century. It was written for a solo voice usually accompanied by harpsichord, organ, or lute. Giulio Caccini produced the earliest collection of monodic pieces for solo voice and continuo (bass accompaniment), Le nuove musiche (New Music, 1602). Caccini was a member of the Florentine Camerata, a group of intellectuals who devised the type of dramatic music that came to be known as opera.

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Opera

Opera was developed as a continuously sung musical drama by the Camerata during the 1590s, with the intention of recreating the power of Greek drama to move the emotions, using music to heighten the communicative powers of the human voice. The earliest surviving opera is L’Euridice, written by Jacopo Peri and Caccini in 1600. It combined elevated declamation, or recitative, by soloists with pastoral dances for nymphs and shepherds. Monody provided the musical means for the new solo vocal style, and the basso continuo initially developed importance as a flexible means for accompanying the soloists.

Claudio Monteverdi carried the Camerata’s experiment further and developed opera into an artistically coherent genre, first in Mantua in Orfeo (1607) but especially in his later Venetian operas Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (The Return of Ulysses to His Homeland, 1640) and L’Incoronazzione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea, 1642). His expressive style backed up forceful dramatic declamation with striking orchestral effects. Monteverdi’s operas had considerable influence on later Italian composers. Both Venice and Naples became major centers for opera. In Naples, in the early 17th century, Alessandro Scarlatti developed opera seria, a complex style of tragic opera.

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Italian operas soon reached France, Germany, and England. The French were quick to develop their own style of opera, thanks largely to Jean Baptiste Lully. French opera, as pioneered by Lully at the court of Louis XIV, featured less elaborate arias for soloists than Italian opera did, and it placed more emphasis on dancing (especially ballet), on the chorus, and on spectacular scenic effects. In England only Henry Purcell had significant success writing opera and vocal music to accompany plays. German operas did not find a responsive audience until the 18th century. Drawn to Italian opera, the German-born Handel studied in Italy and went to England to compose operas in the Italian manner.

In both Italian and French operatic styles, the distinction increased between relatively fast-moving conversational episodes carrying the plot forward (recitative) and extended airs or arias that released, in music, the emotional tensions of individual characters. The communication of significant emotions shifted gradually from recitative to aria, especially in Italy.

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Oratorios

Oratorios were devotional services that featured dramatic dialogues based on biblical stories; they had their roots in Italian religious song. Giacomo Carissimi set a standard for the oratorio as a dramatic production: Related by a narrator and other characters, it used recitatives, arias, ensembles, and choruses, but without staging or costumes. The genre had notable similarities to opera and remained popular throughout the baroque era. Notable examples were written by Alessandro Scarlatti and Vivaldi, and by German composer Heinrich Schütz.

German composers were especially attracted to setting the Passion texts of the New Testament Gospels, a form that peaked in the early 18th century with Bach’s setting of the Passion narratives of the books of Matthew and John. The nonliturgical (not relating to worship) form of the oratorio saw its finest realization in the works of Handel. His Messiah is one of the major monuments in music history.

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Cantatas

Cantatas, written for voice with instrumental accompaniment, developed at the same time as operas and oratorios. Some were based on secular texts; others accompanied religious services. Baroque composers known for their cantatas include Carissimi, Monteverdi, and Alessandro Scarlatti in Italy; and the Germans J. S. Bach, Dietrich Buxtehude, Schütz, and Georg Philipp Telemann.

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