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Music 160: Why Baroque Sounds so Different

[Keri McCarthy]: The Baroque period runs from 1600 to around 1750, 1760. Baroque means “misshapen pearl,” it’s from a term in Portuguese, and it was applied by historians back when looking at music from this time period, and originally it was a really negative connotation. Baroque, misshapen being, like if a pearl- it comes out and it’s so beautiful except for the fact that the shape of it renders it unusable.

The music from this time period incorporates some of our well-known composers: Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Monteverdi, Corelli, some really big name composers come from this time period. And their music is really elaborate, usually longer pieces or were taking movements and adding on to create a longer structure. The music itself is fairly busy, and that, I think, is probably it’s ornamented or overly ornamented. When we listen to music from the Classical period that comes next, you’ll hear a difference between the streamlined and very well-balanced and clean textures of the Classical period. First is those of the Baroque that are a little bit more ornate all together, and so that is what they’re talking about in terms of artwork; we’re talking about gold structures, the Basilica and , the Palace at Versailles, but I think of, you know, a giant, giant wall that maybe is created with wallpaper, with decorations that are very small and ornate in detail, so that when you look at it on the small scale it looks really beautiful, but when you stand back its almost overwhelming or overpowering, so that’s how later historians talk about music and art from this period, and that’s why the term Baroque is used still today to talk about this time period.

An important point about music from the Baroque period: you may begin to feel like this music sounds a little bit more comfortable to you, and that may have happened even within the Palestrina in the weeks that we listened to from the period, and there’s something changing in terms of tonality actually; we’re developing something called tonality. Prior to this point, we’re focusing on modes: there are 12 modes that were in common use by the end of the Renaissance period, and those correspond to mostly the keys- actually if we use the eight modes that were most common, the white keys on the , and if you run along, and I’ll show you right now- if I head to my piano and I play a scale starting on a series of white notes, [Professor McCarthy plays scale on piano] it’s got a perfectly nice sound to it, and these were things they were interested in working with in terms of melody. They were interested not so much in stacking vertical sonorities and, in fact, whatever happened this way was largely, not left to chance, but incidental except at the ends of phrases where we definitely wanted to have something that was [Professor McCarthy plays note on piano] consonant, you know, that didn’t cause tension. And we might even have some intentional tension right before hand but that that final tension is resolved very consonantly and easily. But the thing that this particular scale, these modes don’t have, is a strong pull toward the first note of the scale. [Professor McCarthy plays scale on piano] It might be nice for me to return back to this but you’re not working with the premise that that is going to be an essential part of the foundation of the music. When we start working with two particular modes, ionian and aeolian, these are major and minor modes, and

1 they become the main two scales that are used in the Baroque period, we come back to a set of scales that these two, this pair, that stack very well together to create chords, and so when we listen to a major scale, [Professor McCarthy plays scale on piano] you really want to hear that last note [Professor McCarthy plays scale on piano] as being the final pitch, and that creates the ability for chords as well to be created. Chords are usually triads, three notes, and they stack very nicely. [Professor McCarthy plays chords on piano] So this theory of harmony, tonality, meaning major or minor, are present, rather than a whole series of modes being equally used, is something that is present in every type of music probably that you listen to today, at least every type of Western music that you listen to. So if you grew up with any kind of popular music, any kind of music, if it’s got a base line, it’s all coming from this concept that there’s major or minor in play. And so if feels a little bit more comfortable to you, that is why. We’re working with a concept of tonality.

In addition to just the scales and the chords being lined up, there is something new afoot in the Baroque period in terms of texture and it’s called monody: mono or “one.” Monody is the concept that- it comes about from an Italian researcher named Jero Lama Mai who was looking at some of those Ancient Greek texts that were transferred back after the to Italy, and he was translating them, incorrectly apparently but no matter, that he understood that Ancient Greek tragedies and Ancient Greek dramas were probably all sung. He felt that it was an emersion of the arts and that probably all of the terms in those, all of the verses or the words were sung throughout. And he began to wonder how it could be then with the use of things like a where we have all sorts of voices moving around all at the same time the text couldn’t possibly be clear. But text is so important in the Ancient Greek dramas. And then he comes up with this idea that perhaps what they had instead was a single soloist with some sort of simple accompaniment. This is the texture that we haven’t really talked about yet. We have even from the Countess of Dia from the - we did have a , but if you listen closely the strummed instrument and the Countess’ voice singing, are actually singing the same melodic line with just a little bit of in the stringed instrument versus how she’s singing.

We don’t have a concept of melody plus accompaniment up to this time, so that is something that’s really unique and very audible in terms of Baroque music. You’ll be listening for something called a basso continuo that provides a straight baseline underneath. Usually in the Baroque period that was a harpsichord because we haven’t established a piano yet, and usually it was a harpsichord plus a or a . There are some other instruments that might have been used, but usually it’s a harpsichord and a cello that create a strong baseline underneath. And so in terms of musical structure in the polyphonic world of the Renaissance, we have all of these lines being streamed through, and we’re not very concerned about how they line up like this, but in terms of the Baroque period, we have something very similar texturally to a ladder where you have a top voice that’s most important that carries your melody and your text. You have a bottom voice that’s secondarily important that allows for that text to occur over time, and then occasionally there are points where these two line up. Usually you can hear a strong beat pattern,

2 and you can hear chords lining up on beats one and three, for example, if you’re in four. But you’ll hear right away that there’s a big texture change particularly at the beginning of the Baroque period. Yes, by the end we end up with things like the Hallelujah choir by Handel or these beautiful polyphonic fugues by Bach, and so we do end up with textures that are, again, far more complex, but we’re always concerned in the Baroque period with how they line up vertically, how those sounds come together simultaneously to form chords, and that’s based on the concept of monody or melody plus accompaniment, which is a brand new texture for the Baroque period.

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