Baroque

c.1600 – 1750

Main Composers: Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Vivaldi

Baroque music can be relatively serious and complex, but its surface is often enlivened by plenty of decoration and ornamentation. There are many types of Baroque expression, ranging from busily flowing movements deriving from dance forms to grandly religious works.

Melody and Phrasing – phrase structures can be very clear (e.g. the themes you are most likely to know from Vivaldi’s ubiquitous ‘Four Seasons’).

However, there is often a continuous flow in Baroque music, with repeated patterns and sequences, and with phrases and cadences merging seamlessly into one another.

Texture – the Baroque is the main period for polyphonic textures. There is also much homophonic music of course, but if the extract you hear is polyphonic and not dissonant, the chances are it will be Baroque.

Harmony – often very simple, but can sound more complex when the texture is polyphonic.

Dynamics – the keyboards for most of the Baroque period were only able to play at one volume level, so composers rarely wrote dynamics. If used at all, there are likely to be sudden changes from loud to soft and vice-versa, without crescendo or diminuendo.

Ornamentation – Baroque music is more heavily ornamented (trills, mordents, turns) than any other period.

Keyboard range – the smallest range of the periods you are dealing with, usually within 2 octaves either side of middle C.

Sustaining pedal – was not invented during the Baroque. Many modern pianists do use the pedal when playing Baroque music, but it would be unfair of the examiner to use pedal in music from this period!

Suggested Listening

Bach 2-Part Invention No.13 in A minor 

– Imitative (polyphonic) texture of 2 independent parts; continuous flow.

Handel Adagio, 1st movement from Keyboard Suite No.2 in F, HWV427

– Extensive ornamentation, flowing, homophonic.

Scarlatti Keyboard Sonata in D minor, K.1

– Largely homophonic but with imitative elements; busy repeated patterns; ornamentation.

Bach Prelude and Fugue No.2 in C minor, from “The Well-Tempered Clavier”, Book 1

• Prelude: regular repeated pattern; cadences blend into the flow; emotionally serious;

• Fugue: a fully-fledged polyphonic piece with 3 independent parts or ‘voices’.