Baroque

Baroque in music

The Baroque era in music conditionally continued from Monteverdi's first operas at the beginning of the 17th century until Handel's death in 1759:

• 1600-1650 - Early Baroque,
• 1650-1700 - Mature Baroque,
• 1700-1759 - Later Baroque.

In Russia, the development of baroque music began in the 1640s with the development of a part concert and continued until the middle of the 18th century (see Music in Russia in the 18th century).

Affects

Philosophers and art historians from the first decades of the 17th century began to systematize affects in music, extremely praising their role. As Descartes writes in the treatise "Compendium of Music" (1618): "The purpose of music is to give us pleasure and to arouse various affects in us."

The German encyclopedist Athanasius Kircher, studying the impact of music on humans and the ability to control people with the help of music, comes to the curious conclusions outlined in his treatise Universal Musurgy (1650). So, Kircher defines 8 types of affects that music can arouse in a person: desire, sadness, courage, delight, moderation, anger, greatness and holiness. Developing the idea of ​ ​ connecting music with speech, with rhetoric, Kircher cites about 80 specific melodic-rhythmic figures along with interval and harmonic color to reveal the affects he described.

Thesis

Researchers draw parallels of Baroque music with rhetoric, when at the beginning of the speech the thesis, the original thought, is summarized, and then a chain of reasoning follows, leading to a conclusion, a result (in a musical play to cadance). In this case, one can also call aphoristic musical thought a thesis. The thesis capacity of thematism is very characteristic of Bach's instrumental music. The thesicity and all kinds of versions of the interpretation of musical thought is the main condition for form formation in Bach's inventies and fugues. The thesis containing the semantic load serves as the "key" to understanding Bach's works.

Musical techniques

A feature of the Baroque era is the attention of composers to the fret alteration in the melody. In the end, composers begin to apply the full chromatic scale, giving it a special meaning: the descending chromatic scale symbolizes the movement towards death, dating back to resurrection.

Both in the forms of the orchestral overture - French (slow-fast-slow) and Italian (fast-slow-fast), and in the form of a baroque sonata, we note the most significant contrast of sections or parts, emphasized by thematic contrast. The idea of ​ ​ comparing contrasting themes even penetrates into the fugue, all double Baha fugues will serve as examples.

Шаблон:XVIII Century Music CD