Concise History of Western Music
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Chapter Index Chapter 1: Music in Ancient Greece and Early Christian Rome Chapter 2: Chant and Secular Song in the Middle Ages, 400Ð1450 Chapter 3: Polyphonic Music from Its Beginnings through the Thirteenth Century Chapter 4: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century Chapter 5: England and Burgundian Lands in the Fifteenth Century: The Beginnings of an International Style Chapter 6: The Age of the Renaissance: Music of the Low Countries Chapter 7: The Age of the Renaissance: New Currents in the Sixteenth Century Chapter 8: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 9: Church Music of the Late Renaissance and Reformation Chapter 10: Opera and Vocal Music in the Late Seventeenth Century Chapter 11: Instrumental Music in the Late Baroque Chapter 12: Music in the Early Eighteenth Century Chapter 13: The Early Classic Period: Opera and Instrumental Music in the Eighteenth Century Chapter 14: The Late Eighteenth Century: Haydn and Mozart Chapter 15: Ludwig van Beethoven Chapter 16: Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Orchestral Music Chapter 17: Solo, Chamber, and Vocal Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 18: Opera, Music Drama, and Church Music in the Nineteenth Century Chapter 19: European Music from the 1870s to World War I Chapter 20: The European Mainstream in the Twentieth Century Chapter 21: Atonality, Serialism, and Recent Developments in Twentieth-Century Europe Chapter 22: The American Twentieth Century
 

Outlines:
  - Characteristics of Baroque Music
  - Early Opera
  - Vocal Chamber Music
  - Instrumental Music
  Quiz
  Listening Guide
Chapter 9: Music of the Early Baroque Period
Instrumental Music
  1. Compositions for Instruments

    1. Affected by developments in vocal music

    2. The violin emulated vocal qualities and rose to prominence as a solo instrument.

    3. Instrumental music became the equal of vocal music in quantity and quality by the middle of the seventeenth century.

  2. Dance Music

    1. Dance music styles influenced many other genres, including vocal music.

    2. Suites
      1. A suite: several short pieces, each with specific moods and rhythms
      2. Began in Germany as a continuation of the dance pairs of the Renaissance
      3. As an example, Johann Hermann Schein's Banchetto musicale (Musical Banquet, 1617) includes some suites that build on one melodic idea throughout, and others with only subtle connections among movements.
        1. The sections in the suites in the Banchetto are in this order: paduana, gagliarda, courante, and allemande with a tripla, a triple-meter variation of the allemande.
        2. The style of Schein's suites is dignified, aristocratic, vigorously rhythmic, and melodically inventive, combining Italian and German qualities.

    3. French composers established definite characters for each dance type by arranging actual ballet music for a solo lute, clavecin (the French term for harpsichord), or viola da gamba
      1. Example: NAWM 63a and b, Gigue: La Poste, by Ennemond Gaultier (ca. 1575–1651)
        1. Lute arrangements spread triads out, leaving it to the listener to fill in the harmony.
        2. 63b, for harpsichord, adapts lute (style brisé) techniques to the harpsichord,
      2. The tradition of using little ornaments (agréments) began with lute players and was transferred to French harpsichord composition.
      3. Denis Gaultier (1603–1672) was the leading lutenist of early seventeenth-century France.
        1. His collection of twelve stylized dances, one in each mode, survives in a manuscript with the title La Rhétorique des dieux (The Rhetoric of the Gods).
        2. Each set includes an allemande, a courante, and a sarabande, with other dances added in no particular pattern.
        3. Many of the movements are character pieces with fanciful titles.
      4. Jacques Champion de Chambonniéres (1601–1672) was the most important keyboard composer (clave cinist) in France, followed by Louis Couperin (1626–1661), Jean Henri d'Anglebert (1635–1691), and Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre (see Chapter 11).

    4. Johann Jakob Froberger (1616–1667) carried the French style to Germany and established the standard movements of the suite: allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue.
      1. Example: NAWM 64, Lamentation fait sur la mort . . .
        1. Lament on the death of Emperor Ferdinand III in 1657
        2. Slow allemande
        3. Stile brisé texture
        4. Using the key of F minor to allude to the emperor's name

  3. Improvisatory Compositions

    1. The toccata had been established in the sixteenth century.

    2. Frescobaldi's toccatas are often more contemplative than those of Venetian composers.

    3. Frescobaldi also composed virtuosic toccatas in the venetian style, example: NAWM 65, Toccata No. 3
      1. Frescobaldi evades cadences through various means, giving the work a sense of restlessness.
      2. Performer may take liberties with tempo.

  4. Contrapuntal or Fugal Genres

    1. Ricercare
      1. Brief, serious composition for organ or clavier
      2. Develops one theme continuously in imitation
      3. Example: Ricercar dopo il Credo (After the Credo, ex. 9.8 by Frescobaldi):
        1. Composed for use in church
        2. Shifting harmonies and dissonances, and chromatic lines

    2. Fantasia, Fancy
      1. Used borrowed themes
      2. Series of fugues

    3. English Consort Music
      1. Ensemble music for viols began early in the seventeenth century.
      2. Fancies by John Jenkins (1592–1678) use a variety of procedures.
      3. Later composers of fantasias for strings without basso continuo included Matthew Locke (1621–1677) and Henry Purcell (1659–1695).

  5. Canzona or Sonata

    1. One approach was to build several contrasting sections, each on a different theme in fugal imitation and ending with a cadenza-like flourish.

    2. Variation canzonas use a single theme in successive sections (e.g., CHWM ex. 9.9 by Giovanni Maria Trabaci, ca. 1575–1647).

    3. Most ensemble canzonas are a patchwork of short unrelated sections that sometimes recurred within the work.

    4. The term sonata
      1. Vague in the early seventeenth century, meaning any composition for instruments.
      2. Gradually the term came to mean compositions resembling canzonas in form but with one or two melody instruments (usually violins) with basso continuo instead of the four-part canzona
      3. Sonatas used somewhat free and expressive idiomatic writing compared to the formal, abstract writing of the canzona.

    5. CHWM, ex. 9.10, Biagio Marini's Sonata per il violino per sonar con due corde (1629), is an early example of "instrumental monody."
      1. Contrasting sections without repetitions
      2. Coherence achieved through cadences on A and alternation between rhapsodic and metrical styles
      3. Idiomatic for the violin

    6. By the middle of the seventeenth century the sonata and canzona had merged, and both were called sonata.
      1. Some were specified as Sonata da chiesa, sonatas for use in church.
      2. The typical combination was two treble parts (usually violin) with basso continuo, usually called trio sonatas.

  6. Variations

    1. This type was common, although not always titled as such.

    2. Often the word partite (divisions or parts) was used early in the seventeenth century.

    3. The techniques used were the following:
      1. Melodic repetition with little change, sometimes called cantus firmus variation, with different contrapuntal material in each variation
      2. Melodic repetition with different embellishments in each variation and the harmony remaining the same for each variation
      3. Using a repeated bass line as the constant factor (CHWM ex. 9.11a, Aria di Ruggiero by Frescobaldi)
      4. Chorale melodies as the basis for variations on organ (e.g., those of Samuel Scheidt's collection, Tabulatura nova, 1624, which used written-out parts instead of tablature). Scheidt's works influenced later German composers.

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