Transcript File - Western Hills Choir

Music of the
Baroque
Pachelbel
Vivaldi
Bach
Handel
Baroque Forms
 Cantata
 Opera
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 Concerto
 Fugue
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Doctrine of Affections
The "Doctrine of the Affections" was first suggested
at the end of the Renaissance when a group of
musicians attempted to restore what they perceived
to be the pure word-to-music relationships
advocated by classical Greek philosophers such as
Plato. The idea began in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries when artists said that the
motif of a composition was a statement of an
emotional state of being. It was believed, for
example, that sadness, or euphoria was expressed by
certain combinations of notes.
Fundamental Bass
Line
All parts of Baroque music
must be subservient to a
bass line.
Parts
Solo: lute, harpsichord, organ
Ensemble: solo with continuo,
chamber group with continuo
Orchestra: more than one
player on a part
Johann Sebastian
Bach 1685 - 1750
Greatest composer of all time, Bach was known
during his lifetime primarily as an outstanding organ
player and technician.
The youngest of eight children born to musical
parents, Johann Sebastian was destined to become a
musician. He traveled little, never leaving Germany
once in his life, but held various positions during his
career in churches and in the service of the courts
throughout the country.
During the years Bach was in the service of the
courts, he was obliged to compose a great deal of
instrumental music: hundreds of pieces for solo
keyboard, orchestral dance suites, trio sonatas for
various instruments, and concertos for various
instruments and orchestra.
The Nikolaikirche, Leipzig
It was home of Bach’s
first cantata
performance and
of the first
performance of
the St. John Passion.
Bach brought to majestic fruition the style
of the late Renaissance.
The art of fugue, choral polyphony and
organ music, as well as in instrumental
music and dance forms.
His adherence to the older forms earned
him the nickname "the old wig" by his son,
the composer Carl Philip Emanuel Bach.
With the death of Bach in 1750, scholars
conveniently end Baroque music.
Johann Pachelbel
1653-1706
Johann Pachelbel was an early Baroque composer. In 1671
he moved to Vienna where he became a student and deputy
organist to the Imperial chapel. In 1677 he was organist for
one year in Eisenach, the city of Bach's birth eight years
later. The following year he moved to Erfurt, where his son
was born. While in Erfurt he taught Bach’s older brother.
In 1690 Pachelbel became court organist at Stuttgart. Two
years later Johann took his final post, in Nuremburg.
Johann Pachelbel's repertory is the stylistic ancestor of J. S.
Bach's, particularly his technique of chorale variations.
Bach’s son named Pachelbel as a composer whose works his
father had admired.
Pachelbel’s
Canon and Gigue in D
•for 3 violins and basso continuo
•also in organ edition
•Heard at weddings
Antonio
Vivaldi
Born: Venice, 1678
Died: Vienna, 1741
Another Italian composer and virtuoso violinist,
Antonio Vivaldi is remembered today for the
enormous number of concertos he composed
throughout his lifetime.
He most likely learned the violin from his father,
himself a violinist at St. Mark's in Venice. Antonio
took holy orders to enter the Catholic Priesthood,
and became known as "The Red Priest" due to the
color of his hair.
He became a teacher in Venice at the Ospedale della
Pietà (a school for foundling girls) in 1703, and later
became the director of concerts there. His music was
extremely popular, and he traveled a great deal over
Europe, spreading his fame as a violinist and
composer.
The Four Seasons
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In 1725 the publication Il Cimento dell'
Armenia e dell'invenzione (The trial of
harmony and invention), opus 8, appeared in
Amsterdam. This consisted of twelve
concertos, seven of which were descriptive:
The Four Seasons, Storm at Sea, Pleasure
and The Hunt. Vivaldi transformed the
tradition of descriptive music into a typically
Italian musical style with its unmistakable
timbre in which the strings play a major role.
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The Four Seasons drawing activity
Georg Frideric
Händel
(George
Frederick
Handel)
Born: Halle, 1685
Died: London, 1759
Handel’s style
Cosmopolitan:
-of the world/traveled
extensively
Composer of Italian operas
Born in the same year and country as Bach ,
young Händel was playing the violin, harpsichord,
oboe, and organ by the age of eleven.
Drawn to the theater from an early age, Händel
went to Hamburg in 1703 and began composing
Italian operas. He traveled to England where the
Queen gave the him an annual stipend of £200 in
hopes of keeping him in London as court
composer.
Händel never returned to Germany. He remained
in England for the rest of his life, becoming a
naturalized citizen in 1726 and Anglicizing his
name to George Frederick Handel.
Messiah
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Baroque qualities: grand in scale, solos,
chorus, orchestra, drama,
• emotional, similar to opera
Oratorio: not allowed to be called opera
because of its sacred nature; like an opera
without actors and stage sets; large in
scale, has chorus, soloists, orchestra
Part 1: coming/birth of Christ
Part 2: suffering and death of Christ
Part 3: redemption of humanity
Messiah continued…
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Recitative: passage of music that gives much
information
–secco: dry--little instruments
–accompagnato--more instruments
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Aria: passage of music for solo voice with
less information that is repeated
Chorus: rearticulates the information
– omits, repeats, inverts to vary
Fugue: composition with musical line
articulated in one voice and rearticulated by
following voices in repeat, inversion, etc…
Water Music was written to
accompany a royal barge trip
down the Thames in 1717.